Whitefyst

I realize that I am a little behind here and that a lot of people have provided replies to you already with excellent information. Here I am just reinforcing a lot of what was said and adding in a little extra information.

As others have stated, you should be using AoH as much as possible and only using AoV when necessary. Ideally, you should limit reliance on AoV by use of mana pots (with fel mana being ideal), mana oils (dual weilding allows the use of two and can provide more DPS than a 2Her), and Elixirs of Major Mageblood. Furthermore, as your crit rating goes up, the benefit from TotH will increase as well as helping to reduce the need for Efficiency and AoV. Personally, I have lived without any points in Efficiency since becoming 70 and have been able to manage my mana successfully for the most part even without mana support in raids beyond BoW and the spirit buff. I did struggle a little early on before my crit was high enough to get good returns from TotH.

And for the record, AoH does about 40 more DPS when active not 11.07. The raw conversion that they use between AP and DPS on your character sheet doesn't take into account a lot of factors. The number is even greater than 40 DPS when you add in haste affects.

And yes, I have read your argument about mana pots being an "exploit" and "cheating" and not "what Blizzard intended". If it was not what Blizzard intended, they wouldn't have already changed it instead of waiting until a new expansion when they revamp everything. Currently, the use of mana pots is the universal default method for managing mana for just about every class and has been since well before TBC. Not using mana pots for your argument is artifically constraining your performance, but if that is what you choose to do and your guild is fine with it, that is fine.

Of course, the ideal is to use haste potions instead of mana potions if you have sufficient mana support from the raid to do so. However, you should not be using AoV to allow yourself to use haste potions unless you can get an extra 240+ DPS using the haste potion over its 12s to overcome to continuous loss of 40 DPS over the 2 min cooldown. For my character, the use of a haste potion by itself or on top of haste drums does not provide anywhere near 240+ DPS. It provides about 65 DPS for me with my 2.36 unhasted weapon speed and 1:1.4/1:1 rotation. Now this number will vary for different people depending on their unhasted weapon speed and their chosen rotations.

Also as others have stated, the crit scope destroys the damage scope. On my character, it is a difference of about 10 DPS, but it has an even greater effect than that. That extra crit (about 1.25%), results in a little more focus for your pet resulting in more DPS, more mana from TotH (about 0.5% more), more proc on your Hourglass, and greater EW uptime, helping the raid's DPS as well. Plus, there is no realistic cap on crit. Unless you are giving up a lot in other stats to get it, it never hurts you to have more crit. My average crit in raids is decently over 50%, and even more so when I get lucky and have GoA.

Now I understand not wanting to spend the cash to upgrade your scope now when you believe you will be getting a better weapon soon, but ideally you should be using the crit scope.

And as others have stated, 24 AP is slightly better RAID DPS (not just personal DPS) than +4 stats. 44 health is not worth the loss in DPS and will not save your life in the vast majority of cases nor will the 60 mana keep you from going OOM. On my character, it does +2.9 DPS at the cost of 1.35 average EW AP when ideally performing my rotation and with including LR and BoK. Raid DPS comes out ahead here. Raid DPS even comes out more ahead in situations where I am not performing my ideal rotation consistently, due to moving, interruptions, latency, FPS, bad timing, etc., and am actually only gaining a fraction of that 1.35 EW AP. Furthermore, raid DPS also comes out ahead in boss fights where the physical DPS is spread (e.g, High King, early Mag, Lurker when submerged, Fanthom Lord, possibly on Moro, Hydross, Vashj, Alar, parts of Solarian, parts of the Kael fight, most of Shade of Akama, Gorefiend with them ghosted, Mother when some have the debuff, Council, parts of Illidian, and possibly Anetheron) or when you are raiding with less physical DPS or when physical DPS has died.

I understand and can sympathize with the cost of potions and elixers. I was really hurt by it for a long time, but survived with being fully prepared for every raid with every consumable I needed well before we had any daily quests, much less the number of easy and clumped together ones we have today. However, I utilized a better solution for getting the pots and elixirs than having to do dailies and be a slave to the cost and availability of alchy products or mats on the AH. What I ended up doing was create an alt herb/alchy and level it to 70, which is pretty easy these days. although still time-consuming. The fel mana potion recipe was easy to farm, although I had to pay well for the major mageblood one, but it was worth it. Now instead of an hour doing dailies and hoping what I need is on the AH, I can spend less than an hour farming the mats on my alt and making the consumables. Plus, it makes me money with doing the daily gathering quest and selling the extra mats. Now I realize that leveling an alt to be your herb/alchy slave may be too much for a lot of people, but if you can do it, it will pay off with being worth the investment and continue to do so in the future.

And as another example or option to try, this is how I do my 1:1.5/1:1.4 rotations, and I tend to be quite successful with it with even leading my guild in damage done on some bosses (saying this only to show the effectiveness of this approach when done correctly). I use a macro for the base auto-steady rotation. Personally, I use the simple /cast /cast with KC added (and LB for my WS). If you have low latency, the /castsequence version is a good alternative as is Manilto's 2 part macro. Whichever works best for you. I try to cast my specials over the last 0.5 seconds of the steady shot cast so that they will be qued up and ready to go to sneak in before the auto shot fires (I use Quartz to see my cast bar but other mods work as well). This approach may seem awkward at first, but once you do it for a while it becomes second nature. For the 1:1.5, its always 2 auto steadies then a special. So once you get used to the manual rotation, you get into a rythym that becomes second nature. The 1:1.4 is not much different except that you put 3 auto-steadies before one of the specials. Now I will be the first to admit that it can be difficult to do this ideally (I know that I am not perfect at it) and that you can easily not be performing anywhere near the ideal DPS if you perform it incorrectly. That is where practice comes in.

The other nice aspect of the manual rotation as Rivkah stated is its flexibility. As Intermission stated, it allows you to substitute in other specials, like refreshing Hunter's Mark or a sting, in place of one of the specials with minimizing the impact to your DPS. Furthemore, it allows you to better adjust your rotation to haste affects. For example, if I had a slightly slower weapon speed, I would be better off using a 1:1.5 rotation unhasted and then switching to a 1:1.4 rotation when under haste affects of drums or better and then a 1:1 at haste greater than haste potions. With manually perfoming my specials around the core steady-auto macro, it is just a function of being aware of my haste situation and modifying my timing of specials appropriately.

Now I realize that the manual implementation can be difficult for some people and that for them that using a macro will result in higher DPS for them. Using the full macro for the 1:1.5/1:1.4 is not the maximum DPS they could be doing, but it may be the maximum DPS that they can realistically do, and that is fine. Whatever works for each person in their given situation.

And concerning the badge crossbow at your point in the game with no T6 4-set bonus, if used properly with about 22 passive haste and a 1:1.4/1:1 rotation, it definitely beats the best that can be reasonably achieved with the Steam Pistol or Legionkiller despite the loss in agility from my analyses. I have all 3 weapons. Of course, if you can get BBS soon, then I wouldn't bother spending the 150 badges on it.

 

nosleep

You are right in your idea of how a damage scope works, but you are totally missing the point people are trying to tell you about why the crit scope is way, way better!

I will just quote cheeky here.

 

Serf

Little behind? We've already covered that I was being argumentative and already understand most of those things, just that I needed more in-depth reasoning for some of them, and others I needed to give up thee mindset or an easy-going raider and push the bar, which was a new feeling for me since until this past sunday, I was doing things like Kara still, and was lucky to have an SSC raid. @_@ Things changed drastically and quickly for me in that respect.

I'm not going to argue AotH DPS with you- I was just using the fla conversion AP to DPS ratio, not anything else, due to my lack of knowledge of exactly how much benefit to include compared with the instant shots, et al. Not having Excel to use a spreadsheet sort of sucks. Regardless, while using AotH I run out of mana about a minute and a half into the fight (Trust me, if I could trade out the leather I have for a non-agi/AP downgrade that's int-capable mail, I would, if just for the mana pool) while with AotV I will JUST run out of mana at the end of about four minutes and a couple of seconds, about the average lifetime of a boss. I've tried switching to AotH instead of AotV for fights I know my stable DPS and lost DPS because of the lack of mana forcing me once both mana pot and dark rune were on CD to resort to a steady/auto only rotation gimping my damage output. having the sustainable DPS (and higher ratio of crit output to keep EW up) is more important to me, at the least right -now- than outputting a few more DPS in the first part of a fight.

The scope again... It is ludicrously expensive in gold and/or materials to make, and I have a very realistic expectation to get a better weapon shortly. there is no reason at the moment to change the scope I have. Dropping a single point from TotH even though it's only a 37% drop in chance, seems to have hit my mana efficiency a lot harder than i'd have expected as well. I'm looking to shift some points around to get 3/3 out of it, because it does have a larger impact by far than efficiency.

As for waiting for a new expansion- It's a very, very large change to the entire game's balance. Why would they NOT wait to change it? Blizzard has always had a reputation for making sure to work things out- sure in the end there might still be bugs, but I don't think I've experienced less bugs with any other game company. They do do great work on making sure it's more than just out of beta to get to the masses.

The AP/Stats conversation is waaaaay over. You should have read the rest of the posts leading up to now. :P As for levelling a 70, I don't have the time, nor the patience to do so. Quests are boring early on, and no one runs the instances except maybe SM, which is where I thrive- in instances. Sure I'll do quests outside instances, but 100 fetch quests or 100 "kill X mob type A" quests aren't very appealing. I do have herb/alch friends I've made since then, so if I can provide the raw materials (cheaper than the finished product) they can craft the elixirs for me; Still don't know anyone with Fel mana, and they never sell on the AH.

Regarding my shot rotation/macro, I was asking if it looked alright, or if I could improve it, not that I don't know anything about shot rotations. ;P I've been auto/steady macro since 62, and I've been 70 for 38 of my 72 days played (I got stalled at 60 for a long time because of not having TBC at the time). I do appreciate the feedback though, and hope someone else reading it gets some benefit from it.

I'm not sure how soon I can get my hands on the Bristleblitz, but it shouldn't be too long; As far as I know no one else hunter-wise wants it.

 

Rivkah

Just one thing on the fel mana potion recipe. It can be easily farmed at the blood elf camp in southern Shadowmoon Valley (check wowhead for the exact spot). It's a BOP recipe, but has a very high drop rate, so maybe you can talk an alchemist friend into going with you to farm it for a bit. I'm not a potion specialist and I had trouble finding someone in my guild who was and also had the recipe, so I took one of them to farm it, dropped in 3 kills. There are some group quests in that area too that a lot of people tend to skip, so maybe you guys can get those done while you're there if you haven't done them yet.

 

Harrumph

Sry for barging in on this "Serf vs Surv Community" thread. :P

You got me confused here Whitefyst...
I was under the impression weaving specials using the /cast /cast macro (or Manito's) would still result in more SS than Auto's and clipping of Auto shots.
Or what you're saying is when adding the weaving shots, the macro adjusts (because of GCD?) and never gets off two steadies in a row, and the result is a smooth SS - special - auto - SS - auto - SS - special - auto sequence?

I thought the /castsequence macro was always used for the 1:1.5/1:1.4 rotations, never the /cast /cast...

Thanks for any clarification, but anyway i will try the /cast /cast macro with weaving straight away tonight on DrBoom, so maybe I find the answer myself.

And btw Whitefyst, Rivkah and the rest of you, thanks for all the excellent data and information you have been providing in this thread.

EDIT: spelling and some wording/format

 

Serf

Thing is harrumph... All this information i've forced them to say in the last few pages, doesn't it end up being very useful and up to date? ;D

Also, I think there's been an assumpion going on this whole time- that I normally get SoW and/or JoW. it's not a common thing for any of my raids.

Update: WOOHOO! Finally got rid of my Tunic, though not for what I thought it would be- Yay Vest of Mounting Assault! Just wish it had a bit more int on it. Still trying for my RGC.

 

Brassnukles

Hopeless case. Just ignore him. I am from now on.

 

Uzemaki

Not really. Most of the info given to you has been understood and accepted for a long time: AotH + mana pots are better than Viper, crit scope is better than damage scope, gemming for hit when you are already well over the hit cap is a waste. What you have added is a lot of /facepalm and people thinking "are you freaking serious" in regards to your comments. Everybit of info they have given you in response to your post had already been posted more than once in the thread. You for some reason think your situation is special and that the "rules of thumb" don't apply to you.

You fail at playing a hunter, and your raid fails for not recognizing the level of fail you bring to the raid. You have just been looking for ways to justify it, and you have not nor will not get any here.

 

mako

The least he could have done is use the high end +damage scope. Just noticed that he is a miner too... The scope mats are free for him...

 

Dralmoo

I tried a /cast /cast macro with 0 haste and BBotB and found I would often chain 3 steadys in a row, so that's a no go with my latency at least. But the /castsequence seems to work fine.

 

Whitefyst

First, my stating of how I did my rotation was meant purely as an example, and I stated that people have to use what is best for them. Macros are sensitive to so many things, such as weapon speed, latency, FPS, how often you hit the macro, what method you use for casting, etc.

I use the badge xbow with 52 passive haste to get me into the speed to use a 1:1.4 unhasted and a 1:1 with a haste potion. My much faster weapon speed, reduces the chance of chaining steadies when also adding in the specials. Furthermore, I do not spam my auto-steady macro, I have a good feel for the timing of when to cast using the macro so that the shot order is correct (not that I do not make mistakes from time to time or have a bad patch). I also like using the /cast /cast since for my manual weaving so that when I am at high haste effects I just spam it and stop using my specials. This is what works best for me since I am a button clicker and not a button pusher. I have the /cast /cast macro action button positioned between arcane shot and multishoot buttons so that I can monitor their cooldowns as a soft cue and only have to move a button to the left or right when want to cast a special. I seem be be successful with this since it fits well with my weapon speed and game style of play. However, I readily recognize that this will not work for everyone under various situations since it is optimal for my situation or other similar ones.

Now if I ever convert to a 2:1/3:2/1:1 rotation, I will definitely be spamming that macro as long as I have a quick enough weapon speed to not chain steadies.

 

Serf

Firstly; Understood and accepted by the people who frequent these forums from the start, and have the ability to utilize Cheeky's spreadsheets (Which, by the way, ONLY work with the actual Microsoft Excel product, which is quite expensive at 229 dollars american) perhaps- Quite a few people get directed here to get information and the more basic things they simply don't know. I've directed a large number of peeople here and they've told me the information they've found here is singularily unhelpful because you're expected to know a certain amount of information- information that isn't to be found elsewhere except perhaps in scattered fragments across all 104 pages of this forum, if you're lucky.

Secondly; Of course gemming for hit when already capped is a waste. But when you get a Halberd, Steam-Pistol, upgrade to Nyn'jah's Tabi Boots from Edgewalker's, and get Insidious bands within about 3-4 days of each other, that's a LOT of hit- 70 hit, to be exact. It's not exactly like I gemmed for hit after getting all these things.

Thirdly; No, my situation is not special. I'm tired of trying to find one specific piece of useful information in over a hundred pages, and tired of being told this site is unhelpful for people I and others recommend to come here (I was originally recommended t come here to see if I could get some info to better myself, which I have) for information because of more of the same.

Fourthly; I most certainly do not fail at playing a hunter. I wouldn't have been brought in to the raid if I did fail. The fact with minimal SR we managed to down Mother, and with an end-of-the-raid total DPS of almost 20K also certainly indicates that the raid isn't fail, either. Bad troll is bad.

Lastly; Farming the bowmen, still no scope. No one I know has the scope either, and no one on Trade when I ask has it either. I'd make it myself, but again, no recipe.

 

Orial

This is my first post here.... however i have been reading and reading for some time now. I have found many options/opinions on macros and specs here and I thank you all ahead of time for all the effort you put into this.
However I have tryed many macros and a few other pointers I have found along the way and in the end i find myself in my curent gear eather slipping behind in dps or just failing to get it up were I think it should be.(curently around 1000) I only have my T6 gloves badge gear and T5 shoulders to work with. ATM I have a Hourglass and the Talon of Al'ar to work with as my main trinkets. Any and all sugestions will be taken into consideration and welcomed with oppen eyes.

As far as content my guild has downed all but the last boss in Hyjal and started our way in BT (3 bosses downed so far)

Ty for your time

 

Serf

From everything I've read and experienced, the talon of Alar sucks, get a bloodlust brooch or Hourglass of the Unraveller or, if you still run gruuls/SSC DST/Tsunami (best in slot, as far as I'm concerned, others may diagree... generally, listen to them over me if their names are rivkah, intermission, or Whitemyst. ;P).

 

karleek

My guild is just starting to work on Kalecgos, and I'm having a few gear issues. I have Halberd of Desolation and Felspine dropped for me last night.

I have issues reaching the hit cap (95) and losing the 30 hit from Halberd makes me wince. I can switch StarStrider for QuickStrider (+15 hit), although I was also hoping to switch Leggings of Pursuit for Bow Stitched (-15). We've only seen the Council trinket(+20) once, and after last night that's likely to go to a DPS warrior before me now.

I've plugged the various alternatives into Cheeky's and came up with the following values:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...1sk1ESEg&hl=en

I haven't yet been to Dr Boom to see what the Felspine's haste does to my rotation - the values in that spreadsheet are based on the assumption that it doesn't ruin it through latency/whatever. I'm not entirely comfortable with haste yet, although I have Cloak of Fiends in the bank in case needed.

Armory Lite - The WoW Armory Alternative: Karleek of Kilrogg

That's showing arcane res gear from last night, normally I have Blood Knight War Cloak (never got Aran's, and we only killed Kael a couple of times before attunements were removed), and Bladefist's Breath (changing for Ashtongue trinket though).

The highest DPS and crit and EW values there (ignoring the lines which wish I had Madness already) are where I'm at 71 hit, but that makes me uncomfortable. Obviously the misses are counted by Cheeky's, so the DPS figures should be right (shouldn't they?), and I could even equip Halberd before doing a vital misdirect and unequip after, I suppose.

I'm aware there's not a direct question in all that; I'd just like some opinions and guidance.

 

mrmr

Hello

Just a quick question:

Anyone know a mod to keep track for EW uptime?

I'm running with 2/3 EW now at about 45% crit raid buffed, so i would like to see some in-game value for our "boss debuff
" uptime.
Would be nice to get a history of these uptime value and compare them with 3/3 EW

cheers

 

Brassnukles

Serf:

1). -Use a school/office/friends computer that has Excel.
-Every SV hunter in the world who can understand some English comes here to this forum and this thread.
-We are extremely LUCKY that all the recent SV information is posted HERE in this thread and exclusively in this thread.
It makes searching for what you need to know MUCH easier than wading through dozens of threads, instead of just the one. 104 pages of SV material is a DIAMOND MINE!
-If people don't know some of the 'basics' to which you refer, there are several 'beginners guides' posted throughout the net. Everything that is written here is based and founded on those basics. You can deduce the basics from what is written here, and if you follow what is written here, you may actually never even need to know the basics.

2). -It takes, at best, less than 1 second to buy new gems on AH. 3-4 days is 259,200-345,600 seconds. Feel free to take your pick as to which particular one of those seconds you wish to spare to regem.

3). -Your situation is not special. You are just refusing to follow good advice and wasting forum space with irrelevant objections. Posters here kindly answered your questions and provided you with information that had already been explored several times earlier in the thread. You chose to ignore it. So even though you now have the information you 'needed' before you on a silver platter, you still arent partaking of it. What a waste. Everything is here. It may be difficult to understand at times as there are a lot of numbers and the occasional contrary/confusing poster (such as yourself) but its all here.

Pretty lame and ironic in my opinion to start blaming the forum as 'unhelpful for people' considering how much help and attention you have, undeservedly, gotten yourself already.

4). -You do fail as a SV hunter. The reason is the following. SV is the best Hunter tree, for raids, owing to EW. However it is only best for 1 Hunter, after which BM is the best tree. Therefore the best hunter should SV. Therefore the hunter that is SV should be the best he/she can be. Capiche? There can be only 1 SV hunter, and this important position should be given to the one that best can fulfill it. Not to mention it is also the hardest tree to play to its optimum.

5). -Your guild has 7 hunters, of which you are the only SV.
3 of the hunters have: Stabilized Eternium Scope: [Stabilized Eternium Scope] (+28Crit)
3 of the hunters have: Khorium Scope: [Khorium Scope] (+12dmg)
1 of the hunters has: Adamantite Scope: [Adamantite Scope] (+10dmg)
(Guess who, its you. Nuff said)

Can you please be quiet and keep your 'opinions' to yourself and let this thread carry on its important work without your constant interjections. Your just making a fool of yourself. The last drop for me was when you start blaming this forum for being 'unhelpful' when in fact it has proven itself to be everything but in regards to you. This place owns. Don't try to shift the blame for your own shortcomings onto what is for everybody else the galactic center of SV net resources.

Karleek: Have you considered [Biznicks 247x128 Accurascope].
It might provide you, temporarily, with enough hit to carry you over till you can balance your gear to return to a crit scope.
It would also allow you to juggle some points in/out of Surefooted in the meantime.

 

Serf

I said that having to sift through 100+ pages was annoying, and other called it unhelpful, not I. And none of the guildies i've asked have been able to make that scope, and no one tells me where I can get it. Again, realistically I can expect a weapon upgrade very soon, so it's not even worth upgrading at the moment anyways.

As for information given to me 'on a silver platter' and me ignoring it? I haven't. While I've posted counter-arguments or asked for further information or posted my feelings about things, i have bowed to the superior knowledge of the posters on these forums and have adapted my gear and spec accordingly. Assuming that I'd come here, ask for help, and then basically act like "i'm the best I know better than you' is rather stupid of you.

btw; Search function? Doesn't work very well when most key words used for a survival hunter thread? also sharded by tons of other posts that have nothing to do with survival hunters, unless you use a scope too small to grasp the posts that contain the information you're looking for.

And 3-4 days in which i don't always have access to a computer, be it a school-based one, a friend's, or otherwise. There's only one computer I have any access to, and it's subject to the owner, my roommate, not using it.

 

• Intermission

Top right of page: "Search this thread"

If you search the term "using potions" you can feel special by seeing your own name amongst words such as "cheap", "stubborn", "lazy" and "fail".


edit: Just a reminder:

All...
-previously asked
-12 month old concept
-player/guild specific
-unique snowflake
...questions can be asked in the Hunter Help Me Thread. That thread was designed to keep all that bullshit out of the actual theorycrafting threads, so the theorycrafting threads stay up-to-date and discuss new topics.

The only reason this thread is so large is because everything has been repeated numerous times. It's a never ending cycle. People fail at reading and searching, they feel they should post their specific question instead of finding it out themselves, like the other 20 000 viewers of this post have done. This leads to a bigger and more bloated thread, more spaced out information trickled amongst thousands of random posts, and the evil cycle continues.

 

karleek

I'd forgotten about that scope, thanks. There's even a crafter somewhere on my server. I've just updated that google spreadsheet to add that in to a couple of Felspine options. The decision looks like Felspine +10agi, Bizznicks, Quickstrider and Bow-Stitched. Or, if the haste messes me up, then stay with Halberd + Quickstrider + Bow Stitched.

Taking a point out of surefooted would still need it somewhere in the early SV tree, rather than perhaps Master Tactician where it might make up for some of the lost crit.