Re: emberhawk vs the doomwalker rifle - the retarded cost of adamantite shells would be reason enough for me to use the xbow
Assuming a fight length of 4 minutes, (which is quite a lot for progression content since you'll be wiping more often and usually earlier...) and assuming that your average autoshot interval is 2s and assuming 1 steady shot between each autoshot and non-stop DPS means that you'll end up using 1 ammunition per second for the duration of the fight. This means 240 ammos for an attempt.
Assuming that adamantite shells cost:
3g for mote of fire
50s for mote of earth
2.5g per adamantite ore (4 needed)
makes ~15g per attempt for ammo. Sounds like a much...
But let's compare it to my best non-flask DPS buff that is expected at progression attempts:
Elixir of Major Firepower
9g for 3x mote of fire
2g for ancient lichen
50s for the vial
for a grand total of 11.50g per a single f*cking buff potion that I'm expected to use for +65 firedamage.
So yeah, it's expensive, but if you use the best shells only for the fully buffed attempts it's not considerably worse whan for example fire mage. Ok, you have AP potions and major agilitys etc, but so do we etc...
Prices are from my server, but this was just to illustrate that the numbers are not so much off the scale when comparing to other classes...
I'd have to disagree with the general statement of looking at weapon dps over speed. From my experience, weapon speed plays a way bigger role than weapon dps/stats. On our first Doomwalker kill, I naively took the Barrel-Blade Longrifle, a 2.6 weapon. After playing with it for almost a month, I am now going back to my Emberhakw Crossbow - a 3.0 weapon that's almost 10 dps lower.
For PVP, the crossbow is definitely harder hitting, where multishot is approximately 30-35% of my damage. The crit rating is also a nice bonus. But also for PVE, I can easily fit arcane or (with little delay) multishot right after steady shot. With the gun, however, I can only settle for either steady shot, multishot, or arcane between 2 autoshots, and the gun only gets more frustrating to use with rapid fire/berserking/bloodlust.
I can't speak for the the gladiator xbow yet, as I am still a couple of weeks away point-wise from getting it. But chances are, I'm going to like it a lot, with more times in between autoshots to play with, and the ability to adjust to a different shot cycle with haste effects on you. An increase of about 230 more damage per multishot over my current weapon doesn't sound too bad, either =)
I've been experimenting with a similar thing. I have the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle (2.7) and the High Warlord's Heavy Crossbow (3.2). Testing on Dr. Boom seems to indicate that the DPS doesnt change much. I often get the xbow coming out ahead.
Of course, I'm using the 37DPS arrows, and fitting in Arcane or Multis after Steady. I have 3/5 Imp Arc talent to allow the Arcanes to fit in more easily. Gun only has 32 DPS bullets.
Also, as you say, extra haste effects make it easier to manage having a slower weapon. At least with my latency of 500ms on average.
I'm going to test it in a raid environment to see how the xbow fares.
@zepi: That's about 6gold for a stack of 37DPS ammo for guns. Bows/xbows have 37DPS ammo available for 45silver per stack. Blizzard messed this up big time.
Edit: I should add that I too am saving arena points for the Glad xbow. It looks very nice.
Last edited by Ato : 04/05/07 at 10:33 AM.
Reason: Addition
It's all fun & games till someone gets a [Hydrocane] in the eye!
How many shot weaving rotations are out there? Three? The ones I can think of off the top of my head:
Fast (2.8 and faster) Weapons - One Special Per Auto:
Auto->Arcane->Auto->Multi->Auto->Steady->etc.
Slow (2.9 and slower) Weapons - One Steady, One Special, One Auto:
Steady->Arcane->Auto->Steady->Multi->Auto->Steady->Arcane->Auto->Steady->Auto->Steady->etc.
"Clipping" Priority Queue - Spam What You Got When You Got It:
Multi->Arcane->Steady->Wash Rinse Repeat (Auto fits in whenever the hell it wants)
Priority Queue No Clipping - Spam What You Got As Long As It Doesn't Interfere With Auto:
[You get the picture]
There are probably "clipping" variations of the first two that you can conceivably think of as well...
The 2 rotations I've used for the gun are
1) Auto->Steady->Auto->Multi->Auto->Arcane->etc
I use multi before arcane since multishot is more mana-efficient than Arcane shot with 3/3 barrage and 3/3 imp barrage.
2) Auto->Steady->Multi->Auto->Steady-Arcane->Auto->Steady->etc
I use the above for Emberhawk, and I found myself clipping my next autoshot way more than I would like.
I did 5man and karazhan with both weapons, and the dps I get are so similar (factoring out crit variations) that I really cannot convince myself that the gun is better than the xbow. =x
Assuming a fight length of 4 minutes, (which is quite a lot for progression content since you'll be wiping more often and usually earlier...) and assuming that your average autoshot interval is 2s and assuming 1 steady shot between each autoshot and non-stop DPS means that you'll end up using 1 ammunition per second for the duration of the fight. This means 240 ammos for an attempt.
Assuming that adamantite shells cost:
3g for mote of fire
50s for mote of earth
2.5g per adamantite ore (4 needed)
makes ~15g per attempt for ammo. Sounds like a much...
<snip>
So yeah, it's expensive, but if you use the best shells only for the fully buffed attempts it's not considerably worse whan for example fire mage. Ok, you have AP potions and major agilitys etc, but so do we etc...
Ah, but I wasn't complaining about hunter costs vs. mage costs - I was comparing bullet costs to arrow costs. While as you say, 240 bullets might cost you 15g per attempt (seems high actually, people on my server at least undersell bullets since i don't think anyone would buy them at that price), 240 arrows would cost you about 48s - at no performance loss. Never mind that the arrows are guaranteed availability, whereas with the bullets you need to either hope the AH has them, or find/farm the mats and find an engineer (a dying breed) that has the schematic to craft them for you.
240 arrows would cost you about 48s - at no performance loss. Never mind that the arrows are guaranteed availability, whereas with the bullets you need to either hope the AH has them, or find/farm the mats and find an engineer (a dying breed) that has the schematic to craft them for you.
Or, you could use one of those cheap-arrow-using-mods (which use cheaper arrows for attacks that don't have weapon damage factored in, like arcane and steady), and then use the Hallani ammo (200 unique, sadly) for your auto and multi shots.
I of course am too lazy and pessimistic to DO this, but it would likely allow you the option of having SOME high-DPS ammo handy. (That said, I use up ammo way too quickly for that to seem even remotely tempting.)
/edit: And ... of course wiping would reduce your remaining ammo supply for the next attempt ... so maybe this isn't the best idea. Still, you could use the same strategy to save costs on adamantite shells.
Last edited by Kaelvanas : 04/05/07 at 3:12 PM.
Reason: (forgot that we were talking about progression content :))
Yeah I've thought of that Kael, and I certainly would if I found myself forced to use a gun. Mainly I haven't bothered because with arrows the savings would only be really significant if I used very very cheap arrows for non-ammo shots - which I probably won't bother to stock up on too often.
Has anyone tried using one of those mods? I know you can make macros to mimic their effect, but I'd never bother with changing my macros often based on what kind of arrows I happen to have - are the mods intelligent enough to pick the highest and lowest arrows you're carrying without any fuss, or do you need to inform them?
Needless to say you don't want to be doing this for Multi-Shot. Or even Aimed Shot. Hell, even Scatter Shot and Silencing Shot are affected by ammo, and I'm guessing since they're used pretty often in PvP you don't want to be gimping the damage of those shots, no matter how small. Off the top of my head, these are the shots where this macro would be useful:
Needless to say you don't want to be doing this for Steady Shot or Multi-Shot. Or even Aimed Shot. Hell, even Scatter Shot and Silencing Shot are affected by ammo, and I'm guessing since they're used pretty often in PvP you don't want to be gimping the damage of those shots, no matter how small. Off the top of my head, these are the shots where this macro would be useful:
You're right, it isn't. It is affected by weapon damage, that's probably what got me confused. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not even certain Scatter or Silencing take ammo into account. Does anyone have the actual formula for those? I didn't see it on the Hunter Mechanics thread...
You're right, it isn't. It is affected by weapon damage, that's probably what got me confused. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not even certain Scatter or Silencing take ammo into account. Does anyone have the actual formula for those? I didn't see it on the Hunter Mechanics thread...
I have vague memories of testing scatter and silence and finding them to include ammo (silencing wasn't even normalized at all). The formula was literally autoshot damage * 0.5 for scatter and autoshot damage * 0.75 for silencing (this was before the nerf to silencing damage). like the description claims.
And yes, while you could use a macro instead of a mod to swap ammo, that fails my "I'm not going to bother editing some macro every time I use a different set of cheap/good ammo" lazy-check
Could someone who has the Sunfury and the Gladiator X-bow post which one gave better raid DPS? I'm at about 200+ ms on my connection most of the time, and after this week I'll have enough points for the X-bow, so I am really curious as to what hunters have found. I have heard the theorcrafting behind it, but I wanted to hear from some hunters that actually have both and have compared the two in raid situations. I have the Sunfury and want to know if the x-bow is worth getting or the helm and breastplate (3700 points needs to be spent very wisely :P )
Sunfury Bow with quiver is an attack speed of 2.52
Glad X-Bow with quiver is an attack speed of 2.78
I have used both, and I prefer the Gladiator X-Bow hands down. The shot speed is a lot more realistic for anyone who doesn't live next door to their server.
Reading the thread would be the best choice before posting.
I used to use such a macro but at least for me it caused too much lag to be really useful. I think a Hunter shot rotation is one of the most time critical things in game and to get even a small lag everytime you use that macro is not really an option. Strangly the amount of lag seemed to depend on how busy the server was at that time. Sometimes it was hardly even noticable at other times (mostly in the evening when we´re raiding) I´d estimate the lag was about 0.5 seconds. Furthermore spamming the macro to start the shot as early as possible sometimes caused freezes for a few seconds.
Maybe a mod can do this better, but to be honest - i doubt it. I experience the same kind of small lag whenever I use outfitter to switch gear too so I assume it´s just something server side in combination with switching gear in general.
I was going to point one of our hunters at a mod to do that ammo swap, but my searches of wowinterface and cursed failed to come up with anything useful. Ammo tracking, automatic restocking, but no swaps other than one based on zone.
Anyone able to point me to a mod that will do what you're talking about?
Reading the thread would be the best choice before posting.
I guess I overlooked what you wrote there, I apologize. I was looking for some more opinions too. Rather than posting that comment, could you maybe tell how much of a DPS gain you saw or something that is going to be a little more useful? Sorry, but I just hate smart ass comments.
I guess I overlooked what you wrote there, I apologize. I was looking for some more opinions too. Rather than posting that comment, could you maybe tell how much of a DPS gain you saw or something that is going to be a little more useful? Sorry, but I just hate smart ass comments.
Basically the shot rotation is exactly the same for the Sunfury Bow and the Glad X-Bow, but the Sunfury bow hits for noticeably lower damage. All in all flat DPS gain in my opinion.
Basically the shot rotation is exactly the same for the Sunfury Bow and the Glad X-Bow, but the Sunfury bow hits for noticeably lower damage. All in all flat DPS gain in my opinion.
Except that shot rotations are more tightly woven with Sunfury.
Except that shot rotations are more tightly woven with Sunfury.
If you're using the same shot rotation(i.e. clipping/not clipping the autoshots just as much with either weapon) then wouldn't the only difference be the difference in autoshot dps? Hence Glad over Sunfury.
If you're using the same shot rotation(i.e. clipping/not clipping the autoshots just as much with either weapon) then wouldn't the only difference be the difference in autoshot dps? Hence Glad over Sunfury.
I don't think so. Basically the normal "non-consumable" rotation for any given bow is autoshot-speacialshot-autoshot-specialshot-autoshot-specialshot.
With Sunfury your autoshots happen more often, meaning that you'll hit special hits more often, meaning that you'll deal more damage with them. You'll be using more mana though.
With consumable rotation I mean something in line of chainchugging fel manas to allow spamming of specialshots to increase dps by burning more mana.
Last edited by zepi : 04/10/07 at 10:55 PM.
Reason: (consumables?)
Hem. I use a "auto, steady + multi, auto, steady + arcane, auto, steady, etc" rotation with Steelhawk, which is faster than both weapons. Yes I run OOM quickly, thank god for Combat Mana Potion and large stocks of Mageblood.
I don't have a Sunfury (yet >=() and will have points for the xbow next week. Maybe I'll get lucky tommorow and Sunfury will drop and I can just get gladiator armour. Still undecided which weapon I'd prefer (my only concern really is PvE), the xbow would be much easier to fit shots in, but it seems too slow, it's not a bow (i'm really sick of steelhawk's animations), and I want a god damned Sunfury.
Thanks for the comments Renato, but if anyone else has compared the two in practice for PvE, would love to hear about it. I suppose I'll sit down and math it out tommorow if not.
Just got the Glad's X-Bow today and so far I am very impressed by its upgrade from Steelhawk. Here's a screenshot from today's Gruul kill. No shadow priest/shaman/druid. Only used Elixir of Major AGI/Mastery plus 2 fel mana pots.
Ahh, thanks for more information Renato. Keep the info coming, I want to hear more I was 40 points short this week, so I'll have to wait one more week for mine. So far, the more I hear about the crossbow, the more I think I'd like it better than the Sunfury. I think a lot of hunters are curious about this because it is a pretty big decision spending all those points if it's just a minimal upgrade, ha ha. We need every bit of DPS boost we can get right now, but hopefully the pet changes will help that a bit (and maybe survival changes).
Slightly off-topic, but as a tangent to Lodka's post, I don't see why everyone seems to be waiting for DPS changes for Survival only?
Blizzard have stated:
- Survival tree is being looked into
- Hunter raid DPS is being looked into, most likely adjusted upwards is my guess
I believe Hunter raid DPS is general is going to see a boost, with Survival then getting a boost on top of that, to keep up with the other trees in terms of raiding.
Look, Lactose, we'd rather you didn't eradicate the whole human race.
- Sam & Max
Slightly off-topic, but as a tangent to Lodka's post, I don't see why everyone seems to be waiting for DPS changes for Survival only?
Blizzard have stated:
- Survival tree is being looked into
- Hunter raid DPS is being looked into, most likely adjusted upwards is my guess
I believe Hunter raid DPS is general is going to see a boost, with Survival then getting a boost on top of that, to keep up with the other trees in terms of raiding.
I think pet survival will help (I'm rarely with a shadow priest, so he's always dying). On top of that if they just increased the damage of steady shot it would help a ton and it should not really affect PvP, so I would think that would be the logical thing to do. I also think it'll help if they fix our base crit rating (I can't recall how much it was off, but wasn't it a couple percent?). With every new piece of gear I get, my crit rating keeps going down. I'm down to about 19% now with tons of RAP, whereas the rogues/mages are all around 30%. Hopefully we'll find out what the changes are next week.
04/05/07, 7:07 AM
Similar Threads
