Enova

As it looks now, the 1.9% haste on the necklace is just enough to tilt the balance for the badge crossbow against the sunwell bow. Once again, speed is worth more than ilevel, apparently.

 

Whitefyst

That is very good data; however, I want to point out to those that read these forums to which it is not obvious, that these numbers only hold for a character with SomeRandomIdiot's race, spec, rotation, and the "ideal" gear set he chose. These numbers will vary with different racial traits, specs, rotations, and your current gear set (especially with the amount of haste or hit it has).

Since we are not all dwarves with a 0/20/41 spec and since most of us will never acquire the "ideal" gear set, I do not suggest blindly going off and spending the 150 badges on the [Crossbow of Relentless Strikes] since it may or may not be best for you. Before doing so, suggest performing your own analysis on your character with your current gear set to determine whether it is the best weapon for you now.

I would hate for someone to spend 150 badges on it and have to wait to buy other possible badge gear upgrades only to find that it is actually a downgrade for them depending on what gear they currently have.

As an example, using my tauren with also a 0/20/41 spec and 1:1.X rotation with both multi and arcane shot and my current gear (my guild is closing in on halfway through T6 instances - the easy half) with being fully raid buffed and with some standard target debuffs, I get the following results:

Arcanite Steam Pistol: 1642.97 DPS and 295.7 EW AP (current weapon)
Black Bow of the Betrayer*: 1698.46 DPS and 287.48 EW AP
Crossbow of Relentless Strikes^: 1683.49 DPS and 289.21 EW AP
Bristleblitz Striker*: 1704.46 DPS and 287.80 EW AP
Vengeful Gladiator's Longbow*: 1700.71 DPS and 287.69 EW AP
Vengeful Gladiator's Rifle*: 1700.71 DPS and 287.69 EW AP (same as longbow since no racial benefits)
Thoridal, the Stars' Fury*: 1802.35 DPS and 293.18 EW AP
Golden Bow of Quel'thalas*: 1735.08 DPS and 293.30 EW AP
Legionkiller*: 1644.19 DPS and 294.10 EW AP

*Note that I lose 19 HR when switching from Arcanite Steam Pistol, the best option I currently have for regaining that HR and improving my DPS is switching [Ring of the Recalcitrant] with [Garona's Signet Ring] since I never won the [Ring of Lethality] as an improved hit ring when needed. I am working to get some upgrade items that also give me more HR to alleviate this problem.

^ Even though 6 HR under cap with this weapon, I kept [Ring of the Recalcitrant] since better DPS and EW AP.

Hence, if I was to use only my available gear and only upgrade my ranged weapon, there are 4 options not including the legendary bow (all shown in bold) that are bigger upgrades for my character in both personal and raid DPS than the badge crossbow. These will also even be bigger upgrades once I acquire better HR gear so that I won't have to wear inferior gear to keep up my HR. However, with my average personal and arena team ratings, 1 of those options is not feasible to acquire. Plus, with my guild's progression, another 2 of those options will not be seen for a while. Only the Bristleblitz Striker may be accessible somewhat soon as we will be starting attempts on him shortly. I am hoping to get Legionkiller soon as a minor upgrade until then (it will be a bigger DPS and EW upgrade for me than shown above once I acquire better HR options).

Thus, I need to decide whether I want to spend my badges on the crossbow when 2.4 comes out or to spend my badges on other items (such as the ring which may be an endgame ring or some upgrades with HR that will help with my HR dilemma) and bide my time until I get Bristleblitz Striker and then eventually the sunwell bow. Of course, this decision may be made clearer if I get Bristleblitz Striker before 2.4 comes out. In addition, when 2.4 comes out, I will need to reperform this evaluation with my gear set that is current at that time since the data and my priorities will have changed.

Moral: When it comes to gear selection, do not take another person's data for gospel since their results may not apply for your character. Please perform your own analysis.

Suggestion: If you do not have sufficient arena rating to buy the best arena weapon and am not in T6 instances, then buying the badge crossbow should be a big upgrade for you. However, if you can acquire the a3 weapons or are in T6 instances, suggest perform analyses similar to SomeRandomIdiot's and mine before making a decision.

 

Whitefyst

Got a double post. Sorry.

 

Leighlu

Have you seen a marked improvement with this spec over your previous imp arcane spec? I've had the most success thus far with it, which I modeled after your previous builds.

 

Vasilii

Either you or I is doing something wrong... the crossbow is a significant downgrade to the vengeful bow in my spreadsheet (close to 50 dps loss)

If you hit the 1:1.X rotation button, the spreadsheet actually gives you a 1:1.3 instead of a 1:1.5 to avoid clipping, you need to change it manually, make sure in the "settings and results tab" under "haste breakdown" that the normal box has you at 1:1.5 and not 1:1.3

@Gurth: This is a baseless assumption with no analysis behind it, all current analysis done on cheeky's points to 1:1.5 being far superior to 3:2 rotation for high end survival raiding... its nice that you have an opinion, but please do not share it without some evidence to back it up... the least you can do is a run through of cheeky's.

@Enova: As Whitefyst suggested, please do the analysis yourself, making assumptions like this leads to misinformation. If you're using a 1:1.5 rotation with a 2.8 speed weapon you would actually want to avoid any haste at all because it will only lead to more clipping. In my spreadsheet the clutch of demise is actually less dps than telonciu's pendant because of the haste. Speed is worth more than iLevel, its just that you want slower and not faster :P I suggest you all do some serious analysis before passing on the sunwell bow for the badge crossbow.

 

Sore82

would using [Band of the Eternal Champion] instead of either of those two be a bad choice? What exactly is the DPS difference between them?

 

Vasilii

Swapping the band for the signet, resulted in a loss of 4 dps for me.

 

Whitefyst

To be blunt, that is a question that you should be able to answer yourself for you character by using Cheeky's spreadsheet. It is not hard and by doing it yourself, not only do you get the answer, but you get the answer that is most applicable to your character. I know that spreadsheet has been linked in this thread many times, but here it is again in case you do not have it:

Hunter Spreadsheets -- In development

Other hunters can provide you such answers, but our results are for on our characters with our race, spec, gear, rotation, and standard raid buffs, which are bound to be different from yours.

Now if you are asking what differences others are observing, that is a question I can answer.

For my character, with full raid buffed and using [Angelista's Revenge] and [Signet of Primal Wrath], I have:

DPS: 1669.60
EW AP: 297.01

With substituting [Band of the Eternal Champion] for [Angelista's Revenge], I get +165 health and:

DPS: 1666.66
EW AP: 297.01

With substituting [Band of the Eternal Champion] for [Signet of Primal Wrath], I get +143 health and:

DPS: 1667.46
EW AP: 297.33

As can be seen, for my character as well as Vasilii's, [Angelista's Revenge] and [Signet of Primal Wrath] is the best combo of the three; however, the differences are small (~0.18%), and I would be happy with any 2 of the 3. In fact, I will probably have [Band of the Eternal Champion] and [Angelista's Revenge], unless I can get [Signet of Primal Wrath] to drop and win it since it is the hardest of the three to acquire.

 

Enova

Well, I was at college at the time I read the post, and due to network security, I couldn't access the spreadsheet for solid figures. But, upon a second look over the weapons' stats, the only real reason I see why the crossbow could come out on top is if you're not hit capped, or unless you're not using the exact same control values.
And yeah, it's my bad there, I was following a different - and not very scientific - train of thought (i.e haste reduces less off a faster weapon's speed compared to a slower one).

Personally, the crossbow is nowhere near my first choice of weaponry, regardless of what the spreadsheets say. I find Legionkiller's 2.9 too fast as it is on laggy nights.

 

SomeRandomIdiot

I've been trying it out for the last couple weeks, and frankly I'm not 100% sold on 0/20/41. The math says it's superior DPS, but a number of factors have made it not quite as good. First off, multishot is a dangerous shot to use in non-boss situations. I think we all know why, but it wasn't something I'd thought of before using it. I ended up doing a 3:2 rotation on trash, as it was the best rotation I could pull out without endangering the sheeps. Secondly, and this may or may not be supported by Cheeky (I haven't checked lately) but I've certainly felt I burn through mana much faster using both multishot and arcane shot than just arcane shot. Using the same buffs, group composition, etc that I always have has left me gasping for mana on fights where I used to be just fine. Again, take this as circumstancial evidence, because that's exactly what it is, but I'm not sure which one I'm going to end up using. I've also been considering (and it's literally still in the considering phase, since I haven't run it through cheeky or anything) a 7/20/34 build, since the math I've looked at lately is showing haste to not be nearly as bad for 1:1.5 rotations as I once believed.

In other words, I haven't seen any "marked improvement", and while it may be superior dps in an abstract sense, I can't say I've decided what I'm going to end up shooting with. Hope this helps.


@Whytefist: I hadn't meant those numbers to be anything more than justification for my previous statement that for me, the badge bow was superior DPS. I specifically stated in the post what gear I was using (since it's not the gear I currently wear... most of it is out of sunwell). I hope that everyone here knows how to use Cheeky's spreadsheet, and makes constant use out of it- if you're smart enough to seek out the EJ Survival Hunter thread, and masochistic enough to survive all of the theorycrafting, checking out stuff on your own gear should be second nature. Besides- what is a dwarf going to gain from an xbow that another race won't? The gear I posted was hit capped, and the only complication was the 30 haste rating from the necklace.

As far as for my real, current gear:
Arcanite Steam Pistol: 1561.97 DPS
Bristleblitz Striker: 1532.46 DPS
Crossbow of Relentless Strikes: 1604.82 DPS


@Vasilii: Not sure what you're talking about regarding changing my shot rotation, cheeky is showing me as doing a 1:1.4 rotation at the moment. If it's something big I'm missing I'm going to feel like an idiot...

 

Tiberium

Lets not pussy foot around. There is a lot of misinformation and ill conceived crap getting posted at the moment. Our sole focus at this moment in time should be focusing getting upto 1800 ish raid buffed DPS for Sunwell. Its all very well posting gear sets and its good fun doing it, I did it myself. The DPS swings for this or that item are absolutely nothing when compared to using a successful /cast macro. Check the BM thread and you will find 200+ DPS swings when using /cast macros. Now as we are supposed to substantiate such general comments I will attempt to do so.

Gurth, this is probably the most succint and accurate post I've seen on this thread for a while.

Vasilii this is possibly the most offensive single response that I have read on a hunter thread in, well a long while. HE CAN'T RUN IT THROUGH CHEEKY'S!!! A SV /cast Macro simulation doesn't exist on Cheeky's!!!. I will explain.

MISCONCEPTION No1

That a 3:2 macro exists. It Doesn't. It is for want of a better description a /cast macro. It can only have the generic name /cast macro because quite simply put it does different things for different hunters. When the BM guys use it they get 60 Steady Shots for every 40 Autos. When we as Survival or Marksman for that matter use it we get 66 Steady Shots for every 33 Autos. For the love of cookies we as SV don't even have a name for it!!! Using the BM syntax of 3:2 our version of it becomes 2:1. If we use the old version of our 1:1.5 rotation we would call the /cast macro 1:2. I'm going to refer to it as the 2:1 macro and rotation to avoid further confusion.

MISCONCEPTION No2

That Cheeky's Spreadsheet Supports a /cast macro or rotation for Survival or Marksman Hunters. It Doesn't Cheeky has created the 3:2 spam button as an approximation to what the BM guys see using a /cast macro Not Survival Hunters. He has not and will not create a spam rotation to support the spam 2:1 rotation any time soon. Cheeky's is godly for doing basic gear comparisons, although even this has problems as I'll come onto later.

So what does this mean???

It means for out and out DPS analyses using SV or MM specs its next to useless being limited to hand-weavers and /castsequence macro users at the moment. If you want analyses go take yourselves off to Boom or even better still Badlands.

THE THREE OPTIONS

1) The Vasilii Option. The Baseline Option, 1:1.5 Hand-Weaved
2) Use a /Castsequence macro
3) Use a /Cast Auto /Cast Steady macro to create a Steady-Steady-Auto (2:1) rotation

1) We're going to call this the Vasilii Option as this is what he keeps telling us all to do. Lets assume Vasilii can execute a perfect Hand-Weaved full Arcane Shot and Multi Shot 1:1.5 rotation. Lets assume that Vasilii uses Quartz cast bars or similar. Lets assume that Vasilli can hit all his shots at the start of the red bit of his cast bar. Lets assume that Vasilli can do all this spot on for the duration of a 4 hour raid. One last assumption is that Vasilii shoots exactly 1 arrow every 1 second on average. We have now created the perfect 1:1.5 Hand-Weaved rotation that is in fact modelled by Cheeky. We will call this the Baseline Option.

2) The /castsequence Macro Option. Now lets assume we can't stand staring at our cast bar addon for 4 hours every night and we decide we need a little help. We use the /castsequence macro. Straight away we have cost ourselves 10% DPS over Vasilii's way of doing things. At 100 latency we now only fire 9 arrows for Vasilii's 10 due to the server "waiting" between each and every shot of your chosen /castsequence. This is still very viable if you have a latency range of say 30 - 60 as has always been the case. Nothing changed here then. Most people in reality just use a sequence of Steady//Auto and hand weave Arcanes and Multis, nonetheless the principal is exactly the same and results in lost DPS.

3) The /cast Macro Option. Using the /cast Macro yields an 11.55% DPS increase OVER AND ABOVE Vasilii's perfectly executed 1:1.5 rotaion. Wow thats a bold statement isn't it?

It is indeed. The single most effective way to justify why it can be so is to quote the guy who modelled the 3:2 spam rotation in the spreadsheet that is the root cause of some the confusion here in the SV thread. Cheeky himself.

If you actually study what Cheeky did to model the 3:2 rotation then you will see why we should all be concentrating on getting the /cast macro to work.

THE /CAST MACRO ABSOLUTELY FREE BONUSES

1) Oh we do 66 Steadys for every 33 Autos... What does our 4 set bonus give? oh erm 10% extra SS damage

2) Oh we do 66 Steadys for every 33 Autos... Which is our single most efficient Damage per Mana Shot? oh its erm Steady Shot.

3) Ah but to do the DPS that Kurkis or Thoranir posted we need to be hasted for as long as possible and be able to effectively drop to a 1:1 Rotation at any given time... Oh the /cast Macro does this automatically for you without even breaking stride.

HASTE ITEMISATION AND WHY CHEEKY'S CAN BE DODGY

So I have found the two best Survival pieces in the game!!! Oh really and what may these be?

[Bindings of Lightning Reflexes] and [Cloak of Fiends] Yup go plug 1 or both of these items in Cheeky's for your current pre 2.4 set ups and you will find they increase your DPS rediculously. Especially when paired with a 3.0 weapon.

So Vasilii I don't see you using either of these items on Armory even though Cheeky's is telling you to do so, why is that?.

As you can see just blindly following Cheeky's for DPS is not only dangerous, it is quite plainly wrong when actually using the /cast Macro.

Bottom line is go test on Boom for yourselves, you can't use Cheeky's for SV and a /cast macro

 

volant

It sure is. Perhaps you could back it up with some facts? Let's see, you referred to Cheeky's post as support for this claim:

I can only assume this 11.55% haste is the origin of the 11.55% DPS increase you refer to, since Cheeky's post doesn't compare the dps values of different rotations at all. Now read that quote a few more times and realize that Cheeky is referring to the cast time of autoshot, which doesn't change based on what macro you are using.

Brilliant! For an even better ratio you can use a /cast Steady Shot /stopcasting macro, and get infinite Steady Shots per auto.

Try again. The most mana efficient shot is auto. If you don't think of auto as one of the shots that must be weaved into your rotation, you are doing yourself a disservice.

This is the one part you got right. Kurkis and Thoranir were able to produce some incredible dps by being hasted to 1:1 for most of those fights. Using a macro that makes this change for you may help some people, but it is not required for everyone.

Let's try including a little math in this comparison. You said under ideal circumstances, a 1.5:1 rot produces 1 shot per second. How does the 2:1 match up? Steady #1 requires 1.5 seconds because you have to wait for the GCD. Steady #2 requires 1.3 seconds because you don't. And autoshot requires the .45 determined by Cheeky. That adds up to 3 shots per 3.25 seconds, or about 9% fewer shots than a 1:1.5. The only way a 2:1 rotation will perform better is if it's compensating for a deficiency caused by lag and/or player reaction times.

I agree that people shouldn't blindly follow what is advocated by a spreadsheet. The numbers it produces are a theoretical guess, and should be viewed as a guideline, while the facts are provided by your own testing and WWS. Anyone who is considering using a 2:1 macro needs to go stand in front of Dr. Boom for 30 mins and get a personal unhasted comparison of 2:1 and 1.5:1. I've done this, and 1.5:1 was better. Unfortunately I didn't save the results for your viewing pleasure, but your latency and reaction times are different from mine, so you really should be doing your own test.

 

SomeRandomIdiot

Tiberium, I'm not sure what all the theatrics were for, but I'm going to partially agree with you and partially disagree with you.

The important thing to note is that we are discussing "macros" here, and not rotations. A rotation is an idealized list of shots to be executed in a specific order, designed to produce maximum dps for a given mana expenditure.

Rotation Example #1: Auto Shot
Auto -> Auto -> Auto -> Auto

Rotation Example #2: 1:1
Auto -> Steady -> Auto -> Steady ->Auto

Rotation Example #3: 1:1.5
Auto -> Steady -> Arcane -> Auto -> Steady -> Auto -> Steady -> Multi -> Auto -> Steady

Rotation Example #4: 3:2 (I'm still not sure why it's called 3:2... wouldn't that mean 3 Auto Shots to every 2 Specials?)
Auto -> Steady -> Steady -> Auto -> Steady -> Steady

As I'm sure is obvious, different rotations have different positives/negatives. The Auto Shot rotation is absurdly mana-effecient. The 1:1 rotation scales incredibly well with large amounts of haste. A 3:2 rotation does very well with moderate amounts of haste. A 1:1.5 rotation does very well with no haste. Therefore, based on the amount of haste we currently have, we should choose the best rotation for the job.

Now that we have an understanding of rotations, we need to actually produce them. People do this in many ways.

A purist might hand cast every special shot in his rotation.

A macro can be used to produce the rotation without hand casting shots.

An infinite number of intermediate steps exist between these, where a macro is used for some shots, but not for others.

I believe the purist approach is not practical for most hunters at this point, because the requirements of personally firing every shot in your rotation take away from other important concepts like situational awareness, as well as being very reliant on your consistent perfection. As such, we've established that we are going to use a macro, for at least some of our shots. What macro we will end up using depends greatly on which rotation we wish to accomplish.

Macros are created via 2 ways: /cast and /castsequence. /cast tells the server to cast exactly 1 spell. /castsequence tells the server to cast a series of spells. In order to function the way it does, /castsequence relies on communication back from the server to validate that the spell did in fact go off before firing the next one, and is therefore much weaker in situations where latency is a factor (and as has been shown, it doesn't take much latency for /castsequence to suffer).

If our goal is to produce a 3:2 rotation, we have a few options.

/castsequence !Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

/cast !Auo Shot
/cast Steady Shot

Both of these, in situations of moderate haste (20-30% haste) will produce the 3:2 rotation. The second macro, however, is superior to the first because of latency. While the first macro relies on communication from the server via /castsequence, the second does not, and thus fires the shots in the rotation faster.

Likewise, if we wish to produce a 1:1.5 rotation, we could use:

/castsequence !Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, !Auto Shot, Steady Shot, !Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Multi Shot, !Auto Shot, Steady Shot

/castsequence !Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/castrandom Arcane Shot, Multi Shot

/castsequence !Auto Shot, Steady Shot
handweave your arcane and multi shots

/cast !Auto Shot
/cast Steady Shot
handweave your arcane and multi shots
(note: while this macro produced a 3:2 rotation up above, if you are firing specials in between it will actually produce a 1:1 ratio of Auto Shot to Steady Shot)

Here, we have even more options, depending on the extent to which you want to handweave your shots. I think we can rule out the first macro, as it relies entirely on /castsequence yet produces the same results as the second. We can also rule out the 3rd macro, since the same case exists with the 4th. Which one is superior? It's hard to say. I'll be covering this later.

I hope that clears up the difference between rotations and macros, and provides the groundwork for what I'm going to say now.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In an unhasted situation, the highest DPS rotation available to us is a 1:1.5 rotation. If you disagree with this statement, please read the many pages of theory I have posted on the matter for an explanation.

Small amounts of haste will increase the DPS of a 1:1.5 rotation (we refer to that as "tightening" the rotation) but after a certain point haste gives less and less benefit.

As haste increases, a 1:1.5 rotation stops getting better while a 3:2 rotation continues to improve. Where they intersect is hard to tell, but a good reference point is that at 20% haste, a 3:2 rotation is superior to a 1:1.5 rotation.

At extreme amounts of haste, a 1:1 rotation is superior to all other rotations.

Taken to absurdity, at infinite haste a purely Auto Shot rotation is the best possible.

As such, we now have a guide for which rotation to use in which situation:
1) When you are not hasted, use a 1:1.5 rotation.
2) When you are moderately hasted (20-30%) use a 3:2 rotation.
3) When you are heavily hasted (50-60%) use a 1:1 rotation.

Please note, to this point I have only been discussing rotations.

How we achieve these rotations is a different matter.

With moderate haste, the macro
/cast !Auto Shot
/cast Steady Shot
will produce a 3:2 rotation, and does so in the most efficient way possible. As an added bonus, in situations of high haste, this macro produces a 1:1 rotation! This means that we can use it in both situations, and don't have to worry about when "moderate haste" ends and "high haste" begins.

The final situation to address is that of no (or almost no- remember tightening) haste, when we want to produce a 1:1.5 rotation. Here we have a choice in macros, as was mentioned above.

Option #1:
/cast !Auto Shot
/cast Steady Shot
manually fire Arcane Shot and Multi Shot

Pros: No use of /castsequence means it is not vulnerable to the effects of latency.
Cons: Manual firing of shots means it is vulnerable to all sorts of human inefficiencies.

Option #2:
/castsequence !Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/castrandom Arcane Shot, Multi Shot

Pros: Automatic firing of shots means it is not vulnerable to human inefficiencies.
Cons: Use of /castsequence means that some of the shots (specifically the steady shots and half the auto shots) are vulnerable to the effects of latency.

Which of these macros is superior? It's hard to say. The top one relies on human reflexes and timing, the bottom relies on communication with the server.
Do you believe your personal timing and consistency is incredible, or your latency is terrible? Use option #1.
Do you believe your personal timing and consistency aren't that incredible, or you have low latency? Use option #2.
Do you have great timing AND great latency? Use option #2, and you won't have to rely on your timing.
Do you have not-so-great timing and bad latency? Weigh your consistent timing against your latency, and determine which is likely to be worse. Use the macro that makes up for whichever one is worse.

Conclusion: When determining which macro I will use to achieve a certain rotation, there are many factors to consider. Vasilii, for instance, is confident in his ability to handweave his shots, and as such performs the first macro I have described. (if this isn't the one you use, my apologies- however, I'm pretty sure it is) I'm not quite so confident in my ability to keep up a perfect timing of specials for 4+ hours straight, and as well I play with great latency (grats for living in California I suppose), so I use the second macro.

Final Note: If you are using a 3:2 rotation during periods of no haste, you are not maximizing your dps. If you are using a 1:1.5 rotation during periods of extreme haste, you are not maximizing your dps. More haste is better- as haste increases, your dps will increase IF you use the correct rotation for the amount of haste you are currently affected by. I hope this clears up a lot of the confusion going around at the moment.

Edit: Wow... that's a LOT longer than I initially thought it'd be. I fixed a couple places where I wasn't as clear as I could have been, but on the whole I hope after reading it you all understand what's going on, and are therefore able to discuss the different macros and rotations posted on this thread.

 

• Kamaa

Have you tried:

/castrandom Multi-Shot, !Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot

?

After my pet accidentally tanked a few pulls here and there, I decided I could do it for real.
Lady Vashj/Zul'jin are currently the highest level boss(s) my gorilla, Warfare, has tanked.
Heroic Magister's Terrace is currently the highest level 5 man my gorilla, Warfare, has tanked.

Warfare tanks Lady Vashj & ZA!
Warfare tanks HMGT!

 

SomeRandomIdiot

I have not- definitely an intriguing idea though... I'll give it a