I just had a scary thought.

Do they have an auto shot timer mod? like sorren's hunter timers or zhunter mod?

It's pretty much impossible to maintain a good rotation if you can't see your autoshot time.

But we need more info, what weapons are they using first of all?

Secondly, are they potting, do they use mana pots or do they fd/drink?

How is their gear? mix of t1/t2?

Are they even trying to manage a rotation, or just going by cooldowns?

Our healing lead typically assigns dedicated healing to the MT and any OTs or other specific people if its important for a fight. Other healers are getting assigned out to heal various parts of the raid as needed and just doing free for all healing on those groups. A good example is we have a couple free for all healers assigned to our ranged DPS on Firemaw. They have certain classes to keep an eye on but no one specific. There is no reason they need to be in the same group to heal their assigned group unless your healing strategy involves AoE healing. We do use AoE healing in some situations. Notably Vael. In this case, our group layout changes. But that wasn't really important to this discussion so I didn't go down that route.

These are really good questions and certainly Im not able to answer them all with out going back and finding out first.

The timer mods, I dont know... good stuff though. I'll have to bring it up.
Pots,... I dont think so. At least not too much. I do think a few of them FD/Drink though.
Gear is a mix of T1/T2. Keep in mind we only farmed MC for 9 weeks and then 6 weeks in BWL with just our first Nef kill this last Sunday. So no one is 'decked out' at all. But no one is wearing utter crap either.
Rotations.... I dont know.. I will have to find out.
As to what the weapons they are using. I believe they all have their leaf bows. Perhaps 1 of them doesnt but I would have to double check.

I'm certainly interested in working on the DPS with them and the ideas you bring up is great. But I still don't know how to quantify when hunter DPS is Good, decent and lacking.

FD/Drink will kill their DPS. Tell the ones that do that to stock up on Superior Mana Potions (or Combat Mana Potions if they have the rank). They're cheap and entirely negate the need to feign to drink except on the longest, hardest DPS fights (which you havn't gotten to yet).

This is a good idea but all of them are pretty low on the meter so asking the bottom to query the guy at the top for tips isn't much of an improvement for anyone. They are pretty attentive people from what I can tell so I don't know what the problem is.

Like I said in the OP of course I understand that some fights favor classes and so on. I'm already taking that into account with the consideration. But when its consistent across all the bosses in BWL it makes me think there is a problem.

Speaking from a hunters point of view, i admit we're gimped. though it's not as bad as people think. If the hunters were in my guild, i expect atleast 550+ dps on fights like patchwerk, assuming they have the gear people normally have as they progress through naxx (dragonstalker, a few pieces of cs, ashjrethul etc). atleast on fights we can use pet, we ususually score abit below rogues/mages/warriors, but not too far away. fights i expect hunters top 5, or atleast top 10 is loatheb, patchwerk, twin emps(gotta love this fight as hunter), and sartura.

If your hunters arent performing as they should i advice them to read the posts from lactose, the search button is this way ->

to be fair, if you are barely starting to farm BWL, your guild's gear level's probably not quite up to speed, and of those, the hunters are probably hurting more than the others.

are you guys doing ZG? there are some great upgrades for hunters in there if they aren't in BWL gear already.

for your situation though, i would expect the top damage spots to go to combat dagger rogues, fire mages, and maybe a few fury warriors using at least a deathbringer+BB. this "inbetwee" gear level tends to favor the 3 classes above due to game mechanics and itemization availability, until everyone else catches up to the curve.

where is the *average* hunter in relation to the *average* warlock? is there a knowlegable hunter class lead that can help them out with gear selection and appropriate spec for their gear? at some level, they'll have to switch between marksman and survival.

Replied on your guilds forums Emie, in the thread you had stickied as important.

We're getting a extended maintenance in europe this night, and I'm assuming that is going to mean an upgrade. I wonder if it is the rumouder 1.13 patch with new hunter talents and changes. If it is, there is no reason to waste time thinking about hunters untill we actually now how they fare compared to mages, locks and meleedps.

I have a feeling that the by the time our server comes up from it's surgical coma, the time of 2-3 hunters in a raidgroup is long gone...

1.13 is not going to be added this week. Assuming it is is nothing but foolish unless they completely disregarded their claim that 1.13 would be on the PTR.

i've never used an autoshot timer. heh.

also, feigning to drink is NEVER right. never ever ever ever, unless there's not a boss you can shoot, like on ouro burrow stages or c'thun carapace stages with no tentacle up. mana oils on your weapons (two if you're dual wielding), mageblood pots, and combat/superior mana pots should sustain your mana through pretty much any fight, and on the really long ones you can use dark/demonic runes. before i had 6 piece CS i spent a lot of time farming felwood for runes. mana is a hunter's best friend.

some people say look at their ammo - i say look at their bracer enchants. ;)

One problem that I see in using Patchwerk as a benchmark fight for hunter dps is that it doesn't play to some of the strengths of hunter dps. Not having to move between mobs (and thus being able to easily transition between mobs) and almost never having to back out and pause DPS are two I can think of off the top of my head.

Well that, and the OP is just starting AQ40.

I've played a hunter to 7pc T2, and I found that buying mana pots is one of the best investments I've made as far as hunter dps. In addition, remember that hunters can generally afford to use more consumables as they don't get wiped when FD is an option. Unlike say, rogues. Twin Emps is a really good example of when hunters can stretch Mongoose/Mageblood/etc across fights to reduce their cost (and thus use more on a limited budget)

Why not use Ice Threaded Arrows? I stock up on them all the time on my hunter, simply because they're so cheap compared to Thorium and it's one more consumable I can use.

Make sure you have paladins dedicated to JoL/JoW. JoW is a great boost to sustained ranged DPS, and I know a lot of the Alliance raiders I've talked to do not recognize its value.

Since we don't have any information it's hard to say why, but if your best hunters are consitently in the low 15's, they are underperforming badly if they have equal gear with the rest of the raid. I have not consistently been below top 10 since i started raiding. There are a few bosses where I'm not in the top10, but not many.

Ice threaded are more expensive than thorium headed. If you craft thorium headed by buying the mats and giving them to an engi they are much cheaper than if you are buying the arrows straight off the AH.

2 stacks of thorium and 2 stacks of dense stone = 20 stacks of thorium headed. On my server that's about 7-10 gold for the mats. 20 stacks of ice threaded is 11,2 gold and they have 1 less dps.

i'm not sure why people are trying to say thorium headed arrows aren't worth it. they're 4.5 DPS above jaggeds, and that's just on autoshot. if you do 200 autoshot dps with jagged, you're doing 204.5 with thorium - that's over a 2% increase, and it benefits your specials as well. i use thoriums throughout every naxx clear.

My quiver tends to be:
Thoriums (4-5 stacks)
Doomshot (3 stacks)
Jaggeds (Everything else)

I just don't really bother using thorium on trash (except gargoyles, I hate those gargoyles) And I also use the smart ammo feature on zhunter mod, uses jaggeds to stings and other non-damage based shots.

I'm not a miner, randomly people will give me thorium/dense stone and i'll use thorium arrows on boss fights, but for trash clears i will use jagged arrows.

Despite all of Elendril's muscle flexing, the man does knows his stuff and is incredibly good at maximizing the gear he has as demonstrated by his performance in Naxx. This is a zone where many of us have stumbled at while our rogue, warrior, and mage counterparts have blossomed.

However, reading through your background on the guild I think it's fair to say that you don't have any hunters that are truly serious about maximizing their dps. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here asking for help. Unless they are serious asses, there should be cross pollenation in strategy.

Start with baby steps, make sure they all:
a) understand the theory behind shot rotations and use autoshot timer mods to help them get their own rhythm down
b) understand optimal consumable utilization
c) are geared to the task

For instance, you can't do things like only give Drake Fang Talismans to rogues only and force hunters to use blue trinkets and expect them to keep up.

Long term see if any of the hunters is interested in being the DPS expert for their class and have them do research on forums like this and task them with getting their class up to speed.

It's a dead horse that keeps getting beaten on the forums re: hunter dps scaling at the high end relative to our peers. Still, given the whole package (survivability, low maintenance heals, dps, minor crowd control) a hunter at the top of his game should still be a valued addition. Hopefully they aren't all just playing on lazy cruise control because of all the gloom and doom around hunter circles.

There is no excuse for mediocrity no matter what your class. It is a good sign that your guild is making sure they are earning their fair share and working for their spots.

i'm not a miner either, and i can understand using jagged for trash mobs, but the implications in this thread seemed to be that they're not worth using at all, and that's just not true - they provide a meaningful DPS increase.

i'm kind of spoiled, i guess. i mentioned last week that i was running out of thorium arrows and wouldn't have time to make any before our next raid and logged in to 30+ stacks in my mail :-P

Man who the hell uses Thoriums? That shit's way too expensive, I just go with Ice Threaded Arrows. They cost less and they're only a 1 dps lower, but still a lot higher than Jagged Arrows. I used to be all cool and awesome and switch between Jagged and Ice Threaded for trash, but I got lazy after a while and I don't really spend gold on anything anyways.

Oh and of course you can give DFT to Rogues only and force Hunters to use Royal Seal of Eldre'thalas, the difference in RAP is very minimal.

That's because they want to have a trading card made after them, don't trust them!

Yes, but overall they're less than 2%. With a crossbow of smiting, you get 5 shots per 10 seconds, or 1 shot per 2 seconds, for a general average high DPS of 500 (just saving time, here - I think most will accept that if a hunter is doing 500 DPS they're doing well). To that 500 DPS you're adding 15.3 damage/2 seconds = 7.65 DPS, or right around 1.5%. That's all well and good, but on my server thorium costs 40 silver per bar, and a single stack of thorium arrows will run you a gold. That's 11 times the cost of jagged arrows (12.5 if you're seargant or above).

Why on earth would I spend that much extra money on trash or bosses where total DPS isn't important, for such a tiny increase in overall damage? Seriously, 12 times the cost for a 1.5% increase in performance?

In the same vein, would you use Brilliant Mana Oils instead of Lesser Mana Oils? They're signifigantly better, paired, but they're hideously more expensive.

Is it wrong that my two raiding trinkets are blackhands and a mindtap? =(