Groggan

I will echo this sentiment and agree with it 100%. Thankfully, the best agility items in the game are also very good for your personal dps. Most of the top items for each slot for agility are T6, which you'd want to wear as BM or MM anyway. The only real places that you are choosing an "off" item are things like belt (the [Belt of Deep Shadow]), necklace ([Necklace of the Deep]), rings, and gems. Thankfully, with LR and BoK most of those "off" items are still the best for your personal DPS (particularly when it comes to the gems).

The tough itemization range is T5, I just got my 4th piece, but I don't think I am going to be able to use it without significantly lowering the effectiveness of my EW.

And, @ Lactose, that's pretty much exactly what I've been finding in my surveys for DPS:AP ratios. Really, I get the feeling that a well geared SV hunter may be one of the single largest raid-dps contributors in the game if you have a respectable amount of physical damagers in your raid.

 

Kaber

I think that right there is the biggest problem with Expose Weakness that I personally ran into. I was chatting with our Rogue class leader who recently respecced to combat out of Hemo and he echoed my sentiments exactly. Unless you have a very solid core of physical DPSers that are getting everything out of their classes they can, the value of Raid helper builds is reduced substantially. The potential for great DPS is there, but without people to take full advantage of it, you are just wasting the bonus at best.

For example, when i respecced survival, our hunters should have all seen an increase in DPS. Instead, they are all hovering exactly where they have been. 1 refuses to respec from his MM pvp build, while the other honestly tries but is quite simply not that good a player and has to be pushed to get good DPS. Most of our current rogues are doing very subpar DPS as well, and despite all the help we try to give people, a lot of the DPSers either can't or won't take advantage of the buffs raid help specs bring them. When our "A team" is on, I feel speccing survival is beneficial, unfortunately we are a casual family style raiding guild and we can't all be there for a hard-core 24/7 raid schedule, which means our "A team" is always at about half strength, with the occasional full showing.

Without our top people blowing up the DPS charts, that sense of competition does not kick in and our people that are low on DPS get lazy and do worse damage than before (which really shouldn't be possible).

Where EW/Hemo/etc... really shine is when you have a great core of DPSers. Its been my experience thus far that survival isn't that great in the T4-5 areas of the game, since people are still learning and coming into their own.

 

Jemsky

To quote, EW is good when the rogues know how to benefit on it

Then you get people telling you, ones who dont know you've gimped your own talent sheet that you cant DPS and your jaw drops to the floor.

Anyways, bitter comment aside,

I have decided to spec for Mana efficiency and keep EW 5/5 Efficiency & 2/3 TOTH. Lets see if I can OutDPS warlocks with this Spec and no Shaman and SP in the group.


Secondly, I found that having an approximate unbuffed 31.4% Crit Chance and 2k+ AP works well , so perhaps balancing AP/Crit in that ratio is a good guesstimate..


Any takers on the Math workout for this?

 

Ishmaael

as with the above posters i dont feel i can make very good use of survival. I have around 3 actual melee, plus an enhancement shaman who is lowering his own dmg to WF his group, and our feral tanks who sometimes dps when they arent needed in bearform. Allup the total people benefitting from my EW would number around 7, including the hunters. Just doesn't feel justified, although i do understand that 7 people benefiting from EW is still a raid-contribution of around 1500+ AP.

 

Kaelvanas

Is it 7, or more due to hunter pets? Don't discount tanks as phsyical dps, either -- sure, they don't get as MUCH from it as DPS specs/classes, but it's still at the very minimum a buff to them. Ask them how their threat/sec scales with AP.

 

matrixsage

Ive read most pages ( up to 6-7) and ive have some questions of my own. im assuming that when i mention survival build, EW is automatically assumed

1. What is the general consensus on EJ forums? On the wowforums, its important to have balanced amounts of agi and AP, but on the first few pages of this topic, someone linked gears that had the most AGI, but little AP ( if any) , which leads me to conclude that EJ promotes going as much agi , sacrificing AP for the good of the whole, which im completely fine with.

2. Ive read that keeping your AP high enough yet have high agi is important for the EW build. ive seen 600 agi, 800 agi being points that you need to be at least for EW to benefit. However, i never found out what was a good AP to go with the agi, which translates into me not knowing how much agi i should be sacrificing for a gear change.



2. Im currently raiding Karazhan with a guild, and there is a different turn out rate each time. Is there a minimum amount of physical DPS to justify going survival, or is the fact that 1 prot tank and 1 rogue is enough reason to use EW

3. Just a small question, but my shot rotation is
auto
steady
arcane
auto
<SOMETHING>

usually when i get to the SOMETHING part, i start spamming the steady shot key, and most of the time steady shot will barely finish. Should i be using multishot ( CC pending ) for something , or is what im doing correct. Also, is forcing that steady shot out of the norm? ive noticed that i cannot consistently do this, which leads me to believe that it requires really good timing, or a display bug with my autoshoot add on

4. Is there some sort of website that lets you insert gear, and it will give a character sheet of what your character would have? ive seen the spreadsheet ( way over my head), is that a text version of what im talking about?

5. Ive worked out a build in my head which maximizes agi from both MM and suv tree and it looks like this
0/28/33

i never saw the appeal of readiness. It allows for 30 second hasted attack, ( and if i interpreted what ive read so far correctly, controlled haste = good, proc = bad) , more traps and oh **** resisted feign. If i were to go that build, that would give me a 17% agi increase, which is always good. However, am i passing up to many good talents in survival to do that?Is there general build that EJ has considered good ?

6. Ahoq. The godly hunter who goes 0/20/41. Is he doing the right thing? ive seen previous pages saying how when your base crit is as high as his is, MT is just a waste of points. Also, what is the reason behind savage strikes? I like it because when i get melee, chances are its about to be dead, and a nice crit or 2 will finish it off nicely, but is that the reason why? And why the heck is he missing a ring in his armory?

7. Survival pets. Ive been through a bunch of pets for raids, wolfs ( gimmick if anything) cats , scorpids ( never saw high ticks , though i dont have an hour glass) . What is considered a survival's pet, and what role does it do? I used to have a boar to charge adds off softies, but that soon changed when the boar got bored and i changed to a wolf for the nice ap bonus. But it hardly seemed useful because when im standing at max range, the wolf doesnt give bonus to the ones at the mob, and if i howled at the mob, i dont get the bonus, and this is all assuming im in the DPS group. should i just get a level 70 2.2 patch ravager and use him for straight DPS?

8. wyvern sting, how good is it? from this quote
This spec is just wrong. 4/5 in MT is a waste. The only reason you go for MT is to get readiness. Furthermore you skipped Survivalist which has obvious benefits. And no Wyvern Sting? It's one of the best moves a SV hunter gets...
is it really that good? ive only ever used it in pvp ( 1/2 the time i get LOS ) and once in Slabs right before the second boss with those tricky pulls. Is it really that worth it to put 1 point for?

9. Lastly, how does my gear look for karazhan raid The Armory

i personally think that i need the hourglass of whatever from BM, boots tfrom god knows where, and maybe a new ring. I do have some gear mentioned from previous pages , ( like the neck of the deep , the 2 socket neck, or the belt of gale force ) but ive switched it up with stuff that has around 10 less agi, but alot more AP. Some suggestions on that part would be nice too.

Thanks for reading my lengthly post, and now i head of to bed. Hopefully i followed most of the forum's rules

 

khel

Honestly, I feel like your Karazhan raid will benefit most by you just going with a standard 41-20-0 BM spec. Survival is a great 25man spec, but of limited use at lower gear levels in 10 man raids. You will also be grouped with casters often who can benefit well from Ferocious Inspiration, but it's your call.

Shot rotation...it will change for you depending on haste timers. Generally though a 1:1.5 rotation is something like this:
Auto->Steady+Multi
Auto->Steady
Auto->Steady+Arcane
Auto->Steady

Can be very difficult to do manually, so there are a lot of macros to use if you look around.


Get a ravager or a windserpent as your pet (I prefer windserpent). Scorpions are getting nerfed next patch and were mostly just for BM hunters anyway.


I would not step foot into Karazhan until you get rare gems, and properly enchant your gear.

 

Seipher

I would really question advising the 7/21/33 build. As has been mentioned before the value of haste to a MM or Survival hunter is at best questionable. It provides no benefit to the 1:1.5 rotation and the 1:1 rotation will do less damage even if you switch to it with QS up. I have verified this for my own gear using Cheeky's spreadsheet however it could be somewhat gear dependent. Bottom line, unless you are BM haste is not really that great with the exception of rapid fire (and possibly Heroism/Bloodlust) which provides enough haste to make switch to a 1:1 rotation worth it.

Realistically, even though MT is not that great when compared head on to other options, it is still a better talent than IAotH for a Survival build. TotH, while obviously providing no dps increase, is still a very nice bonus to go with it too. Yes I agree FF is a great talent for two points but it's not so great for seven.

Just my $0.02.

Here is a raiding build I would recommand: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

If you really want to get IHM instead of efficiency.

 

Sapa

I'm 0/20/41 atm and I support what Seipher here wrote. I tried 7/21/33 - 0/24/37 - 5/20/36 - 0/28/33 and probably something else too. I respec every week probably tossing a point or two somewhere else or try something different.

Each perk of any build could be talked about, each has its bonuses or some weakness. So I just went for talents that would be used as much time as possible. On end for SV is where to put last 7-8 points? IaotH+FF+Scatter / Barrage+rws+Scatter / TotH+MT+Readiness / TotH+Barrage+Scatter.

TotH, MT and RWS and Readiness are only ones here thats with you all the time no matter the situation and will work in your favor in those situations.

I would recommend 7/21/33 to hunters that have luxury of having DST or some pieces of haste gear. And to hunters that are new in shot rotations (and refuse to go BM). Maybe to hunters that have regular lag issues with ~400-500ms times. But for rest 0/20+/32+ is way to go, depends on your typical group and content you are doing. 0/20/41 is giving me pains on Kael, but it also saved 2 wipes at phase3 yesterday.

Best try Kael, p1-4(not good way to present build, but we are doing kael only last 14days): Wow Web Stats
Group: F.Druid, Shaman, 2xHunter, Paladin (had goa most of time, lotp was out of range mostly in p3 and not present in p1 at all)

http://sigs.guildlaunch.net/sig.php/511456SFyyX.png

 

khel

Hm yeah maybe I was a bit presumptuous to recommend 7-21-33 to hunters just starting as survival, as the build's effectiveness truly depends heavily on your weaponspeed+rotation+hastes. Edited since survival isn't my specialty

 

rudedog

What makes you think that haste provides no benefit to a 1:1.5 rotation? The way I see it, a good chunk of this rotation is made up of steady shot followed directly by auto which would recieve the full benefit of haste (unless you were using a super-fast ranged weapon).

heres an example of a 1:1.5 rotaton:

auto/steady/multi/auto/steady/auto/steady/arcane/auto/steady/auto

The parts in bold will revieve the full benefit of haste. Its only the part of the rotation where you are squeezing 2 specials inbetween autos which wouldn't get the benefit from haste.

Its my belief that a MM or SV hunter with a slow(ish) ranged weapon would see a fairly good return from haste due the to large ammont of dead time between steady and auto.

 

Vasilii

But as with anything, you have to ask yourself what are you giving up in order to get the minor benefit of the haste effect? There is an opportunity cost associated with taking IAoTH over other talents.

So while in your example haste will never "hurt" your dps, it in fact does, because the opportunity cost of getting IAoTH is giving up barrage or MT + Readines.

It's interesting, Cheeky's spreadsheet models IAoTH as dps loss compared to a 24/37 or 20/41 build, yet DST is modeled as a gain of 20 dps over the hourglass with the same builds. The spreadsheet uses a priority 1:1 rotation while DST is active and a 1:1.5 while it is not. I'm guessing some of the dps gain will be lost in user error switching between rotations, and personally I've never liked random haste effects, but since DST is sitting in my bank collecting dust, I'm going to give it a shot in raids.

With my gear the highest dps modeled survival build I found was 0/20/41 with DST replacing the hourglass, this is interesting considering readiness is not even modeled. Readiness is at least worth an extra rapid fire, maybe 2 --- probably allowing you get to 5 RFs in one boss fight (assuming a 10 minute battle)

The biggest problem I see is using 0/20/41 w/ a 1.1:5 rotation is only having 2/3 ToTH and no shadow priest... the mana situation could get really bad really quickly... if you get a shadow priest then it's all good

 

Cheeky

I don't model Rapid Fire as any kind of extended DPS boost at all. You can hand-build shot rotations with it and see how much DPS you can do while it is active, but I don't explicitly factor it into everything.

Cheeky of Havoc

 

Hunterlin

Problem is that haste have no effect on GCD.
I will add some modeling with numbers, lets say we have not hasted speed of auto to 2.4, steady to 1.3. I assume lag 0 and our reaction time instant.
0 auto
0 steady
1.3 steady
1.5 arcane
2.4 auto
<wait for GCD here>
3.0 steady begins
4.3 steady
4.8 auto

after some amount haste we have 1.1 steady, 2.0 auto
0.0 auto
0.0 steady
1.1 steady
1.5 arcane
2.0 auto
<wait for GCD here>
3.0 steady begins
4.1 steady
4.6 auto

All haste did made out full rotation just 0.2 seconds faster. Better results MM and Surv hunters will have if they switch to 1:1 rotation during bigger haste effects like rapid fire or DST.

 

Acedude

For the bold/idle time, I often opt using KC as filler. I raid with around 200ms of latency, so that idle period for me is rather short most of the time. While KC isn't on GCD, it still has a very short cast delay, and I have not found a macro that flawlessly integrates KC into a spammable auto/steady macro.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....44126MzuTx.png

 

Zuktar

I dont know if anyone said this already, but you can use 2 * Jagged Talasite (4 agi + stamina) and it will count as two yellow AND two blue gems. I am fairly certain this works for other secondary colours as well, ie: 2 * orange gems count for 2 * red AND 2 * yellow etc.

So in theory you will loose 20 - 8 agi to get a +12 agi and crit damage meta working, and have some crit bonus and stamina for " free".

 

affamu

I think Jagged Talasite is 4 CR and 4 stamina. But it's true that multi-color gems count for 1 of each color gem. I have the Demon Stalker helm, but am still wearing the Second Sight helm because I haven't quite figured out a good way to swap out gems. And also because I don't have the gold right now to get a Relentless Earthstorm.

More generally:

I've been trying to re-arrange my gear for awhile now. I'm at 800 Agility unbuffed, and I can get as much as 846 with gear I already have, but not without giving up too much of some other stat (often hit rating, believe it or not). A Belt of Deep Shadow, once that pattern drops for us, should let me swap out the stuff to break 850 Agility, so I'll have around 1k raid buffed. In the meantime, I think my RAP has suffered from my Agility obsession.

I do good DPS in most raids I'm in, even when filling in for more progressed runs. Of course, this is competing against other players on Earthen Ring (US), a server not well known for having superb raiders, to put it politely. Until recently, I was always ahead of the BM and MM Hunters I've grouped with. This is partly due to gear (our BM Hunter was very, very unlucky in KZ runs, whereas I have almost everything I want except for Aran's cape, Garona's ring, and the Hourglass from BM).

I do make more use of haste than most Survival Hunters, judging by this thread. What I usually to do is something like this:
Auto, Steady, Arcane, Auto, Bladefist's, Multi, Rapid Fire
Auto, Steady -- until Rapid fire wears off, then Abacus of Violent Odds
Auto, Steady -- until Abacus wears off
Auto, Steady, Arcane, Auto, Multi, Auto, Steady -- until Abacus or Rapid fire are on cooldown again

But that's all controlled haste. I tried a 5/20/36 build, and I didn't react to QuickShots well enough to keep it. MT seems okay, but I often wonder if I could spend those points better somewhere else. I don't use Multi as often as I would if I had better lag/framerate, so Barrage doesn't seem like a good choice for me.

In many ways, I have a compromise shot rotation. It's something I can do with my usual 300+ms of lag and (since the 2.1 patch) my whole screen freezing up every 5-15 seconds. I suspect lag and the periodic freezes are my main loss of DPS these days.

I have mostly KZ gear and am in a regular group that is just starting SSC. I am often grouped with the other Hunters (one of each flavor) and a Shadow Priest. I rarely have LotP or GoA. Also, our Paladins seem to value Salv > Might > Wisdom for Hunters instead of Kings > Might > Wisdom for reasons that have never made sense to me.

This all adds up to having somewhat unpredictable DPS. I'll have 700 one week and 950 the next. When I have low lag, a good group, the right buffs, and not too many screen lockups or weird UI issues (like Autoshots stopping until I go out of combat and re-start), I'm very happy with my personal DPS.

 

Younsan

Hi there

Does any one experience a strange behavior with the combatlog debuff logging?

Cause on our last Lurker down (Wow Web Stats), I’ve been unable to see the debuff Expose Weakness on the Lurker while I can see it on the adds (I checked the whole combatlog manually to be sure).

I’m standing in an external platform with another hunter (we are in charge of trapping one add while killing the other).

Does that mean that the debuffs logging mechanics on the combatlog are subject to closer distance!!?

PS: I’m having all range extended to 200 on my config file.

Thks in advance.

 

Hunterlin

I would recommend using gems of right color for these 2 items because of socket bonus.
Comparsion using blue quality gems:
8 agi (delicate living ruby), 4agi/4hit (glinting noble topaz), 4agi/6sta (shadow nightseye) +4agi socket bonus, total 20agi/4hit/6sta + 1yellow,blue for meta requirements vs
8agi x 2 (delicate living ruby), + 4cr/6sta, total 16agi/4cr/6sta + 1yellow,blue for meta vs
8agi x 3, total 24 agi.

 

Kaber

We've been having issues with our combat logs for WWS as well. Not the same issue mind you, but combat is showing up as shortened and some abilities have not been registering at all. We had a Gruul kill that came out with only 2 million damage done with the starting Misdirect showing in the log and random chunks missing here and there.

You might want to start having multiple people logging your fights so that they can be uploaded simultaneously to get rid of some of the error. Aside from that, I could not tell you what's going on with WWS.

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