Hunters and Haste Effects


Lately I’ve been contemplating on haste effects and how hunters benefit from them. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that the benefit of haste effects (apart from Bloodlust) is inversely proportional to the “tightness” of rotations.

I went with the assumption that a hunter would strive to create a rotation that minimizes the waiting time between the end of a special shot cast and the next autoshot in order to produce the highest possible number of attacks per minute and thus maximize DPS output.

Basically there are 3 rotations that I can think of that fit the concept of a “tight” rotation, depending on weapon attack speed (the least possible time spent in waiting for an autoshot after a special shot):

A: auto-special-auto-special-etc.
B: auto-steady-arcane-auto-steady-auto-steady-MS-auto-steady-auto-etc.
C: auto-steady-arcane-auto-steady-MS-auto-steady-arcane-auto-steady-auto

Any haste effects would throw those rotations off and would require the hunter to adjust thus lowering his/her DPS.

Basically my point is simple: since hunters operate on 1 layer of attacks because autoattacks are dependent on castable attacks (in contrast to warriors and rogues who have 2 layers of attacks – 1 for specials and 1 for autoattacks, independent of each other) we don’t benefit much (and even suffer) from the haste effects on our autoattacks if our rotations are tight enough.

The point is that the actual value of Rapid Fire, IAotH, Dragonspine Trophy, Abacus of Violent Odds, etc. is rather low and even negative for a tight rotation because they do not affect the global cooldown and because our autoshots are linked to our special attacks. Haste effects are only beneficial when they “tighten up” a “loose” rotation.

I’m afraid I’m not very good at explaining, I hope you got it though


P.S.As this is subject of discussion in most of the hunter-dedicated threads, I decided to start a new topic specifically for "hunters and haste". It's getting harder and harder to navigate in those threads due to the sheer amount of topics discussed in each of them.

The best way to go with haste effects - steady-auto (and + Kill Command after patch)

Arcane is instant and anyway trigger GC. Multi is not affected by haste effects as long as i know and trigget GC too.

Btw need fast and proper gun for this. With 2.0 or 1.8 as in long times, Toxin or Grand Marshal's Bullseye =) . I'm very sad, that there is no such epic bows/guns in the game atm.

Ellurion you do realise that you cant do steady shot faster than once every 1.5 seconds + latency? (without heroism)

From my personal experience it´s impossible to do rotation C unless you´re using the Glad X-Bow or something similar slow and even there I´d debate if it´s possible to do this rotation under real life circumstances without delaying auto shot even though in theory it certainly should be possible. I´m currently using a Sunfury bow with 2.9 base speed and I can hardly do auto-steady-arcane-auto without delaying auto.

For said bow I´ve got a few diffrent rotations depending on my haste, if I can use multi (can´t if there´re CCed mobs) or if I want to save mana.

Low cost, high haste rotation:
auto-steady-auto-steady

Medium cost, high haste, cc rotation:
auto-arcane-auto-steady-auto-arcane

Medium cost, high haste, no cc rotation:
auto-multi-auto-arcane-auto-steady-auto-arcane-auto-multi

high cost, low haste, cc rotation:
auto-steady-arcane-auto-steady-auto-steady-arcane

high cost, low haste, no cc rotation:
auto-steady-arcane-auto-multi-auto-steady-arcane-auto-steady-auto-steady-arcane

To further complicate matters I can downrank the shots depending on my mana situation. Also even though there´re diffrent stages of haste and I only made the diffrence between high and low haste so far.

In conclusion I´d say I kind of agree. Higher haste may not be a bad thing per se as it's got the potentioal to enhance our DPS, but adapting to it to use the max potential at any given point in a running rotation is difficult and tedious at the very least. So I´m very sceptical about short-term haste procs too and would rather take another DPS boosting proc like AP or an permanent passive haste bonus.

Glau posted a nice discussion of this in the BM theory thread with an equation describing the equality of auto/steady to only auto. The real issue is that even if you maintain steady/auto rotation and delay autoshots (because your attack speed is less than 1.5) it's still more damage than not casting any steadies and just using arcane/multi as they come off of cooldown. Essentially haste below 1.5 only scales the damage of your white shots, because you simply can't fit extra shots in (beyond the 1 arcane / 6 seconds and 1 multi / 10 seconds) without disrupting the benefit from haste (the lower attack speed). The obvious solution, to me, seems to be making all haste effects proportionately scale the global cooldown to allow us to maintain a proper rotation.

Give us rogue/cat GCD? Its not like we have anything to spam after MS and Arcane Shot go off for pvp.

So let's get this issue some visibility. This doesn't feel like an unreasonable request. If the mages can QQ hard enough to get the tailoring nerf reversed, we should be able to get someone to take a serious look at this issue- especially since it's probably a design oversight in the first place.

I've come to this conclusion myself. I just can't dynamically, and reliably adjust my shot rotation to account for hastes that proc on hit. And even if I do, I'm not sure the benefit is there -- I find myself dropping from two specials, to one between autoshots, and am effectively moving to a bow speed thats right in the dead zone of too slow for one special, too fast for two. I'm already limited by global cooldown when it comes to firing specials, so the increased autoshot speed isn't going to net me more specials in the same amount of time. And assuming it does grant an increase in dps if played right, the chances of me not screwing up when it turns on and crushing my first autoshot or two, and getting my GCD out of sync are pretty slim.

I threw the 5 points normally in IAotH into Endurance Training, and my pet and I seem to have better survivability on Serpentshrine Trash. I -hate- the pulls on the way to Hydross, I think all of our ranged does. I think I have about 20 screenshots of pretty much instant deaths.

I don't mind rapid fire, its controllable, and I know exactly when I need to swap into the new rotation. IAotH would be viable for me if all fights were like patchwork, where I go into my box of focus, paying attention to nothing but my shot timing. Unfortunately there are a lot of fights where I need to be paying attention to a lot more than myself, and looking for a quick shots proc is probably the last thing on my mind.

PS: Not saying its impossible to benefit from the talent, just that I lack the skill to do so reliably enough to justify the 5 talent points.
PPS: Also, adding my general non-hasted rotation -- auto-multi-auto-steady-arcane-auto-steady-auto-steady-arcane I leave the multi and steady by themselves, if I dont, my shots fall behind.

I picked up the Dragonspine Trophy and I've found that as long as I'm keeping an eye on my autoshot timer, I don't run into too much difficulty switching between my normal Auto-Steady-Arcane-Auto-Steady-Auto-Steady-Multi to a non-clipping Auto-Steady-Auto-Steady loop for a few seconds, and it certainly doesn't hurt to be saving a little bit of mana without appreciably losing DPS. I'm currently Marks spec with Sunfury.

I'm a Troll with Rapid Killing, so I'm used to popping Rapid Fire and Berserking and just doing the Steady-Auto rotations to maximize DPS without shot clipping, but I'll have to do some testing to see if I run into shot clipping with a Haste proc up.

It seems to me that Haste effects are more beneficial for Marksmanship or Survival hunters because you're not likely to push yourself beneath the global cooldown and start clipping your shots.

I do exactly as you said, if I gain afew haste effects such as: Bloodlust, Rapid Fire, Haste (dragonspine trophy), or Quick Shots I'll drop arcane and multi from my rotation, and concentrate heavily on - to the best of my ability - not clipping my auto's. I will definaly put up with up to 0.4 secs of clipping an auto to push through a steady shot.