◊ Lactose

Interesting, I did not know this. Might be something to check for in Cheeky's spreadsheet.

Look, Lactose, we'd rather you didn't eradicate the whole human race.
- Sam & Max

 

Cheeky

I didn't know it either, so the spreadsheet is wrong. Another item on the "to do" list.

Cheeky of Havoc

 

miruman

In an attempt to derail this thread, I was hoping to get some advice regarding Surv spec.

I just switched over from the powerhouse 41/20/0 BM build in hopes of providing more of a support/utility role in my guild's progression group. We currently have 2 excellent BM hunters who would consistantly outperform me (ranking 1-3 in raid dps, while I was 4-7 generally).

My current spec is 0/24/37 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft .

Gear: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen'jin&n=Miruman
Roughly 810 unbuffed agi and about 34% crit.

Shot cycle: Trying- Auto, Steady, Multi, Auto, Steady, Auto, Steady, Arcane, Auto, Steady but having trouble figuring out a good macro for it and timing my KCs right. With BM I had a great, spammable Auto/Steady/KC macro that worked really well for me.

My only raiding experience with Surv so far was the A'lar encounter last night on adds basically the whole fight.

Things I noticed:
- My personal DPS was way down.
- Switching targets constantly caused a lot of downtime on EW.
- The physical DPS group didn't seem to benefit enough from EW for me to justify the DPS gimp.

I definately intend on testing this spec further on some stand and shoot type fights (Mag, Gruul, Tidewalker, etc.) to see if last night was just a bad encounter to judge off of, but in the meantime I'd love any feedback I could get about my build, gear choices, shot cycle and macros I could be using.

 

Malthes

I feel like this is your problem. Were both BM's also on adds? Ideally, a surv hunter should be hitting something that lots of other people are hitting as well, to take advantage of EW.

 

miruman

We had one BM hunter on A'lar, then Surv hunter (me), the other BM hunter, rogue and prot warrior on the adds. Definately a hard fight to judge the overall viability of the spec, but my DPS definately didn't seem adequate to me, while in BM spec, I could generally keep up.

 

Groggan

Do you have a WWS of the Al'ar fight miruman?

In general, you will feel weak when it comes to personal DPS (except perhaps if you can get yourself a pocket feral drood and bm hunter). The strength of an SV build comes when you take into consideration the value of Expose Weakness. Really, it's hard to accurately get a feel for just how good Expose Weakness is, but to give a reference the BM hunter in my raid calculated out that he gets around 101DPS from my Expose Weakness (he gets about .37DPS per AP, and I am now running at 1100 agi raid-buffed with an elixir and food). That's just him, from what I can gather rogues typically get about .3DPS per AP (so 82DPS from my EW). I've yet to get any sense of warrior gain from AP, but I imagine for fury warriors it should be at least close to the rogues. Then you can factor in slight gains in DPS for the tanks, as well the resulting gain in TPS that allows for more DPS from threat-capped classes. Overall, it starts to become clear that EW is exceedingly powerful.

The question is, are you and your raid prepared to see your personal DPS appearing to be lack-luster compared to what it would be if you went back to BM?

 

miruman

Unfortunately they haven't been updated in the last week, but I definately intend on doing a before and after comparison once I have a good sample to look at.

I don't mind taking the hit but I would like to get a better idea if I am going about it in the right way. It seems to me like there is a gear level at which this spec becomes more viable and outscales FI, but I don't think I'm there yet. Also, dropping about 25% of my personal DPS seems like a bigger hit than I would have expected to take.

 

Kabuto

I recall my first few raids as Survival were terrible. Now I'm back up there pushing the BM guys.
There's nothing really wrong with your gear and if you stick at it you will improve.

 

Sapa

When I started with SV spec, my personal dps dropped too until I got used to 1:1.5 rotation.

Skip KC for raid or two, use it when you get the "feel" of SV and will see gaps where KC can be sneaked in. SV 1:1.5 rotation is something you must get used to. You can't macro it.
Steady+auto macro can still be used, but multi / arcane need to be added manually.

On Al'ar you should really be on him not adds (p1 Al'ar, p2 Hit what rogues are hitting).
Al'ar is one of fights where I beat our BM hunters every time.

@Groggan
I asked our folks to give me feedback on ~250ap gain.
MT said: 30-40TPS
DpsWarrior (arms!): 70-80dps
Rogue: 70-90dps (depends on spec)
Enh.Shaman: 60-80
Missing bear tps/cat dps

WWS of 5x Al'ar wipe... (3 new people + fury specced OT = win)
Wow Web Stats

I'm SV. Others are BM.

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

 

Emilykane

Best thing i would think is to use 2 Macros and fit in Arcane/Multi as needed (dont forget to leave free 1 Auto/Steady/Auto cycle between Multi and Arcane to not get fucked up by the GCD and delaying the following Autoshot)

Macro 1 (castsequence): Auto/Steady (mash Arcane or Multi during the Steady Cast when they come up)

Macro 2 (castsequence): Auto/Kill Command/Steady (mash this macro during your Steady cast when KC comes up, feed in Arcane/Multi like above. After KC fired immediately mash macro 1 during the next steady shot cast)

Pros:

- your autoshots wont get pushed back by the KC and hidden 0.5s Autoshot casttime even when hasted. (because KC will fire before the steady)
- you can switch targets with no problems because you fit in multi/arcane manually

Cons:
- takes time to get used to switch between the 2 macros at the right time

 

Ascoline

@Miruman

Take your time to get used to the survival playstyle.
Once you got solid equipment you won't be too much lower in dmg compared to a BM.

At the moment I'm completely skilled for raid support, i.e. 5/5 in imp. marks, agi gear and no mana saving skills in favor for dmg skills.
I really like it, because it gives some solid dmg boost to all melees and hunters and it is by far not as boring as BM playstyle from my point of view.
Disadvantages are, that I have to drink mana pots on cooldown on every try and also on most bosses we farm.

 

Groggan

Sweetness, so that's about a .3DPS:1AP rate for arms warriors, about the same for rogues, and even around the same for enh. shaman as well. Me likey. Thanks for the info Sapa.

From the sound of it, most "pure" dps classes are gaining around .3DPS:1AP in SSC/TK level gear (hybrid dpsers seem to be a bit lower, lowest proly being feral droods). I suspect it will go up some as well with hyjal/BT gear (haste rating for instance should increase the value of AP). I'd be willing to bet a good conservative equation for raid-dps-contribution of EW may be something along the lines of:

The real dps-contribution would likely be higher since that is assuming an average of .25DPS:1AP raid-wide, but still, with 8 dpsers and 1100agi that's 550DPS, not bad at all.

 

Kaber

I'm a bit late to the thread, but on the topic of the value of Improved Aspect of the Hawk I did some DPS modeling and found it to be one of the worst talents you can take for DPS unless you are a BM specced Hunter. The thread where I break it down is over at tkasomething.com, so many of you may have already seen it.

It reduced my overall damage with MM by close to 100 DPS when I added AotH in to pretty much any build. The problem is when it causes you to go into a quick shot rotation, you use nothing more than Steady/Auto (or you can use Multi in place of a steady shot when it is up). Now for MM, that actually reduces damage a very large amount because the build counts on both Multishot and Arcane shot being woven in on top of steady shots to do good damage.

If you are curious to see what happens to your DPS when you remove all haste abilities and trinkets, load your gear and either a MM or survival spec into cheeky's spreadsheet. Put 5 points into Imp. AotH, load up on haste trinkets and/or end-game haste gear, and model your DPS. Then take the 5 points out and place them somewhere else, replace the haste items with the Hourglass and Bloodlust broach (or whatever you happen to have for your character) and take a look at your DPS with no quick shots and a max special rotation.

Now I did not do this for a suvival build, but if it is anything like the MM builds I think Imp. AotH should only be specced for BM hunters. When I get some time I will model the survival builds in the DPS sheet.

 

• Glaurong

Haste/IAotH is viable for MM/SV but you need to have stacked haste of at least 10% and be using a [Barrel-Blade Longrifle]. That takes you down to the ~2 second rate of fire a BM hunter will have with a 2.8/2.9 weapon. Sadly there are no upgrades for that gun if you choose this route. The two endgame weapons are pretty terrible in terms of speed/itemization for everyone really. I guess they really were designed to say "You win PvE, go PvP!"

Log Parser for BM Hunters (Right click, save as) - Updated 10/11/2007

 

Trohck

This has come up a lot lately. Haste does not reduce overall damage, ever. The only thing that reduces overall damage is you making poor decisions due to haste.

If you kept the same rotation under the effects of haste, what is the worst possible thing that could happen? At worst, your autos would fire exactly as if they were unhasted. This would mean no change in DPS, not a decrease. With haste, odds are you will see anywhere from a slight to significant DPS increase depending on how well you are able to adapt your rotation.

 

Groggan

Trohck is right. If dropping to a 1-special rotation causes you to lose 100dps under IAotH, then the correct rotation for under IAotH is not a 1-special rotation (I'd guess it's the normal MM rotation with auto-clips being expected and accepted, your DPS gain will come during the auto-steady-auto portions of your rotation).

 

• Glaurong

The problem there being you have to make good decisions about a ton of different things every second or so. You have to juggle a global cool that is unaffected by haste, ability cool downs (6s and 10.5s) that are unaffected by haste. If you have proced hastes these conditions can change on a shot to shot basis.

Compare these two:
The top one is a pretty standard 1:1.5 rotation with a 2.9 speed weapon and 15% haste.

The bottom one is again a 1:1.5 rotation with a 2.9 speed weapon and ~27% haste.

It looks good on paper, you adjust the rotation, cut some dead time and you finished your rotation in about a half second less time. However what happens when you get to the multi-shot the second time through that rotation? Your cool down isn't up, what do you do? If you slot a steady instead you will push the next auto back nearly a full 1.5s and all your gains (and then some) are gone. If you let the Auto fire and then slot a multi you just blew your opportunity to let an auto fire while your GC is ticking (again you lost all your gains and more). There is no good solution here. If you include variable latency the situation worsens.

However if you can get enough haste to take you down to a 1:1 rotation the gains are massive. There is also some room to improve if your 1:1.5 rotation is slower than your multi shot cool down, which can happen if your latency/reaction time is bad.

Log Parser for BM Hunters (Right click, save as) - Updated 10/11/2007

 

Kaber

Incorrect. I modeled that as well and a MM with a shot time under 2.0s does far less damage than one using a max special rotation at 2.54s (2.9s bow is the optimum for MM/surv). Believe me, I spent almost a week slacking off at work trying different gear/spec combinations. I used the high DPS MM build of 15/43/3 (which actually does more damage than a BM until you hit black temple and haste up a BM to 1.8s shot times).

Now you are asking, "why would that be?" Yes, you shoot as fast as a BM. Your pet, however, doesnt swing as fast as the BM's pet. That is one of the primary reasons a hasted MM build does not work. Believe me, I tried as hard as I could to make the DPS of a hasted MM build work since I thought it might allow me to take a good PvP spec for raiding (since it would be mana efficient as well). In the end it does not work. If you want to debate this point, begin modeling the DPS and maybe you will catch something I missed.

Let me rephrase this so it makes more sense:

If you force it to meet your max special rotation, you gain absolutely nothing, nor do you lose anything. However you did just waste 5 talent points, so you DID essentially lose something. For a survival hunter you essentialy choose AotH or mortal shots. You can shave a tiny amount off your max special rotation assuming 0 latency (which I find to be completely unrealistic), or you can boost crit damage by 30%. For a MM you dont really lose anything, since there arent many other DPS abilities that AotH is taking from, but I'd rather spend them somewhere that they dont just get wasted entirely.

If you instead switch to a steady/auto rotation for the hasted shots, you DO lose DPS vs your standard max special rotation.

If you do not believe me, feel free to model the DPS in Cheeky's spread sheet to see what I am talking about.


I agree with the rest of your post, but this is not actually true. As I said before, I modeled it with enough haste, the barel bladed gun, and a spec that caused a similar shot time/rotation to BM. It did lower DPS than an unhasted MM build.

 

Kaber

To give you guys an idea of what I did, here's a copy/paste of an earlier post I made on the subject.

The following specs are the ones I used for MM (AotH vs non AotH):
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

And my standard BM build:
The Armory

Using my current gear (with the exception that I swapped around bows based on speed to maximize the DPS and replaced my cloak with the Heroic one as I only own the crystalweave at the moment). I went with a Serpent Spine bow (Vashj) for the following set as it is the optimum ranged weapon and did a max special attack shot rotation:

-the spec without Imp AotH does 2037 DPS
-the one with it does 1975 DPS.
-Attempting a steady/auto rotation drops DPS to 1768.

Swapping to a BM spec with the same setup I got 1967 DPS with imp. AotH. Switching to the Barrel-Bladed gun from doomwalker bumped my DPS up to 2024.

I then went back to the MM spec and added the Crystal Weave Cloak, Bindings of Lightning Reflexes, 2 band's of Devastation, and a haste enchant on the gloves. I had the following results with the Barrel-Bladed gun (doomwalker) using a rotation with Multi-shot replacing steady every time it is up:

-the spec with Imp AotH Does 1949 DPS
-the spec without does 1866 DPS
-switching to the bow from Vashj does 1835 DPS.

I switched it to my BM build with the above setup and got 2107 DPS. When swapping to the Vashj bow I got 2066 DPS.

So haste is a BM stat, and unfortauntely won't do much to make MM/survival comparable. I did find it interesting that with no haste that MM build has an edge on BM.

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

After doing that initial test, I found more haste gear from the end-game, plugged it in comparing it to basically T6 level gear (since the haste gear is on that level) and kept coming back to the same results. No matter how I adjusted the shot rotation, Marksman just does more DPS without AotH than it does with it (or for people that want to try and force the hasted speed to a max special rotation, roughly the same DPS).

A hasted MM spec does lower DPS than a non-hasted spec. Yes, I said lower. Why? Because while you could try and force a max special rotation, you just wasted a ton of stats on haste that you aren't using. Or you are using a steady/auto rotation which inherantly does lower DPS for MM than a max special rotation.

 

Hunterlin

I would counter with 2 arguments.
1) Efficiency and TotH do not increase burst DPS on paper, but for DPS over time we need it. IAotH saves mana if you switch to 1.3(from 1.5) special or 1:1 rotation during haste.
2) Latency slows 1.5 special rotation a lot. Haste partially compensates it.

If haste hastens rotation so that special is not up, leave it to next steady-auto. You may lose some dps by firing arcane or multi one steady-auto later, but gain mana efficiency by not delaying auto-steady.

 

Kaber

How do you gain efficiency by firing more shots in a set period of time?

As for survival needing better mana efficiency, I think we can all agree that with TotH and Efficiency, Survival is not mana starved by any stretch. Many argue that it is more mana efficient than BM, which is the ultimate mana friendly max DPS raid build.

Now to make the argument for going to a steady/auto hasted rotation for MM based on mana efficiency - I make the argument that if your goal is to last longer and have high Raid DPS, MM is certainly not the way to go. And I think my numbers prove that. To say, "well you have better efficiency with the hasted build" while cutting your potential DPS a signifigant amount gives more credence to BM being the only really good DPS raid spec.

But back on the topic of survival - it is arguably the least mana hungry build a Hunter can take. To further reduce your DPS by taking hastes in the name of mana conservation strikes me as... well... unnecessary.

 

Kaber