QuiggyB

Behavior I am seeing is when the arcane shot lands in tghe .5 sec cast time of auto shot the entire cast sequence hangs up and waits on an extra auto shot before continuing.

/castsequence !auto shot, steady shot, arcane shot, !auto shot, steady shot

With 4/5 imp arcane spec'd and a 2.9 spd weapon, 15% quiver. This happens infrequently with no haste up (once per 90 seconds or so) but with any haste on its fairly common - 7 missed steady shots and 3 missed arcane shots in 100 seconds with IAotH and DST procing. Latency was 180-200ms during that test.

 

Seipher

Introduction: I am testing the theory that there is still a change to the way auto shot is working even post the hotfix of the /cast !Auto Shot bug. I am aware that the bug was hotfixed but there appears to be a change in autoshot where it cannot be 'clipped' or interrupted once the 0.5s cast has begun. This happens regardless of whether you use /cast !Auto Shot or not. Thus, even just spamming steady shot can demonstrate this behavior. Note that what this means is that autoshot will not go off until a casting steady shot finishes casting, however a steady shot cast will also not begin until the 0.5s autoshot cast finishes either.

Edit: Removed original post as the conclusions were incorrect and based on bad data.

Edit: Well I noticed the crit rates between those two tests varied so here is a much longer test, with the MoC instead of Hourglass. No buffs, no hawk, no pet, BM spec, Legionkiller 100k damage: (675dps)
Wow Web Stats

Same setup with cast sequence macro: (673dps)
Wow Web Stats

Seems to be that with close to equal crit rates there is no advantage to steady spam. It uses way more mana and doesn't seem to average any extra damage. I do agree that there seems to be a thing with not interrupting auto shot casts, just looking at quartz shows me that. If there weren't steady spam would just spam steady shots repeatedly. That means that starting your next steady or instant in the last 0.5s of your steady shot swing timer is a good practice. This may help with higher latency and getting good rhythm when hastes are up.

It doesn't seem to be game changing though. MM and Survival hunters will be able to tighten their 1.5 rotations with less clipping but that is about it. Given that 3:2 rotations have 3 GCDs in two shots it is possible that a MM/Surv hunter with impeccable timing can stack a bit of haste to get their weapon speed closer to perfect (2.25s) without significant clipping.

Edit: Sigh it looks like I may have been using the Merc. Bow on those. Logging in and out to upload this WWS reports is messing me up. Not that it should make a huge difference but a quick test using assessment as a meter shows that /castsequence is reasonable better than spam for the slightly faster weapon. Perhaps spam works well for a much slower MM rotation, someone will have to test it.

Nope comparing to a second set of tests it looks like the first ones were Legionkiller. Here are the second test for posterity though:

Steady Spam (651dps):
Wow Web Stats

Castsequence (657dps):
Wow Web Stats

 

Gearknight

This is my experience as well, and it happens even if you just use an Auto/Steady castsequence and manually weave Arcane. Having the Arcane shot waiting to fire prevents the castsequence from detecting that Auto has gone off and proceeding to the next steady.

 

Soulcow

I was talking about the /cast !auto shot /cast steady shot macro were auto was delayed and would still shoot after a steady without losing time on auto shots and gaining more steady shots. You could only get this effect when using the macro. What you discribe works also manually and seems to be new to 2.3.2 too.

 

Cranch

I can confirm we're back where we were at 2.3 (with the exception of the !Auto Shot change.) Numbers follow are the number of steady and auto shots that occurred over 60 seconds with different methods, with the ranges observed shown. No haste effects proc'd.

1) /cast !auto shot ; /cast steady shot macro and just spamming steady shots had same behavior: 37-40 SS, 20-24 Au in 60 secs
2) /castsequence steady shot, !auto shot: 30 SS, 29 Au in 60 secs
3) /castsequence !auto shot, steady shot: 30 Au, 29 SS in 60 secs

Comparable damages are (using my measured average of 660 steady, 640 auto in my last raid on non-crits)

1) (mean 38 ss 22 au) 39160 damage / 4810 mana = 8.14 dpm
2) 38360 damage / 3300 mana = 11.62 dpm
3) 38340 damage / 3190 mana = 12.02 dpm

So the best tradeoff for me is case 3, the /castsequence !auto shot, steady shot macro.

* edit * The reason I prefer (3) over (2) isn't the dpm -- that's really the same for (2) and (3) over time. It's because you get an auto shot off immediately. Now there was a comment I read somewhere that said that if you feigned, then macro (3) would delay one autoshot time anyway, in which case (2) is potentially epsilon better fighting a boss.

 

Gjorn

Hmm, I just tested my old macro compared to the one I made yesterday at Dr Boom.

Old Macro:

/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast [target=pet, dead]; [pet] Kill Command
/castsequence reset=2/target/combat Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()

New macro:

/cast !Auto shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill command
/cast Steady shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

I tested by firing continuously on Dr Boom for two minutes, while hunters mark was up. And repeated the procedure a few times with both macros. No buffs besides AotH. Kara level gear. Hourglass trinket.

Yesterday, before the hotfix my dps went from about 650 with the old macro to about 850 with the new one. Recount was used as damagemeter.

Today, post hotfix the increase wasn't as dramatic, but there was still a marked increase, using the same testing method. Spamming the old macro still produced about 650 dps and the new one about 750. When I checked recount it showed that using the old macro I fired a roughly equal amount of autos and steadies. Using the new macro I fired more steadies than autos. Rougly 70-75 steadies to 60 autos.

I'm not much of a theorycrafter, so I don't know the reasons for the differences, but they were clearly there.

 

Sidewalk

I just tested on Dr Boom as well.

The "while-broken" macro (!auto; kill; steady) as well as the newer (kill; seq !auto, steady).

The first one did more dps because steady was clipping the auto shot (ergo getting more SS's in and fewer AS then should be), where as the second one ran perfectly clean (even number of SS to AS).

Having Auto unlinked was nice ... to bad we couldn't keep it :-(

 

• Jakt

I've done some testing on this as well, and the following macros now seem to result in correct rotations (SV hunter right now):

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

for a rotation including Steady/Arcane (no talents in the arcane cooldown reduction) and

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

for a full 1:1.5 rotation. I basically just dropped the !Auto Shot after each Steady + Special instance, so the macro does not get stuck anymore, but does (at least in my environment, 200-250ms latency) still fire the Auto Shot.

That said, using the macro does seem (for me at least) to cause delays somewhere in my rotation. I was seeing the interval between auto shots pushed out by ~0.15 seconds. Does anyone have a link to a combat log analyzer handy?

 

drabbles

Testing this has been driving me nuts. I never tried the double firing of Aimed Shots or Multi's but I assume fro other post that those occurances have been fixed. I have seen a change in using the /cast !Auto Shot /cast Steady Shot macro from yesterday to today though. Instead of firing basically 3 steadies per 2 autos (which was basically how it worked yesterday) today I am firing roughly 3 steadies for every 1 Auto.

So I decided not to time myself when testing but rather to fire a fixed number of arrows and time how long it took for each macro to fire them off. My results surprised me!

For the test I had no haste buffs (no AotH). I fired 50 arrows using the "old" /castsequence !Auto Shot, Steady Shot and 50 arrows using the "new" /cast !Auto Shot /cast Steady Shot macro. Recount was used to record the time.

Using the old macro it took 68.11 seconds to fire off 50 shots.

Using the new macro it took 57.76 seconds to fire off 50 shots.

The new macro gives us a serious haste buff lmao.

I will leave it too much smarter people than I to figure out what is going on here. I do feel that what ever it is that is going on will be changed/fixed eventually. Obviously something is broken as a 1:1 macro should result in its intended 1:1 ratio not a 2:3 or 1:3.

 

erb

This was also my experience earlier today at good old Dr. Boom. Using the same macros, AOTV and I took off both of my trinkets (so no procs of any kind).

New macro did more DPS while making my steady/auto ratio around 62/38
Old macro did the same DPS as it always did, ratio 50/50

 

Omegatron

So what is the best BM macro? I don't know.

 

Adenhart

Maybe this has been overlooked because of the bug, but is Arcane Shot downranking working for anyone? It certainly isn't for me

 

beo31

So, I've done some testing until Doc Boom almost died. Used the different macros until I ran out of mana. Attack Speed is 2.1 as for I am BM. Tests done without HM and with AotV, and w/o any procs.

Using any "old" macro, the ratio was - as expected about 50/50, depending on how often I crit'ed, it averaged in about 590-610 DPS. With the new macro, doing about 2 times more steadies than autos (65/35), I did like 670DPS. For sure mana was going down faster.

I tried the macro again, this time with AotH and RF, and ratio went back to almost 1:1 until my mana was gone.

So, when mana is not a problem, the new macro is doing about 10% more DPS - well, at least it did in those tests.

 

• Jakt

Did some more testing this morning and am seeing this kind of delay even when I run a 1:1 rotation. With the prince bow my attack speed is 2.52, so I wouldn't expect to see Auto Shots getting delayed. Anybody else seeing something similar?

 

sueyed

So wouldn't this be about the same as manually replacing Steady with Arcane- and Multi-Shots? Or am I way off?

 

zork

This is cause you are now spamming steady shot, and every two steady shots (when the auto shot timer is ready) you will automatically fire one auto while the global cooldown is running and you cannot start a new steady cast.

But this is indeed interesting. You do one steady every 1.5 seconds with 1 auto every 2 steadies automatically. Thus: 2 Steady and 1 auto every 3 seconds.

Normally with steady, auto macro you do 2 steadies and 2 autos in ~4seconds.

2 steady + 1 auto every 3 sec = 8 steady 4 auto every 12 seconds
2 steady + 2 auto every 4 sec = 6 steady 6 auto every 12 seconds

OK, this is indeed interesting. Since you do more steadies you will use more mana, but do more damage too.
They both end with 12 shots after 12 seconds.

The best part is this: If you can get your auto shot timer unter 1.5 seconds you will automatically fire 1 auto between every steady. Since it fires automatically when global cooldown is running.

RothUI Download - Tank Guide - Avoidance Calc - Threat Calc - Rothar - darkmasters.de

 

ligghtpro

Been doing lots of testing and lots of theorycrafting on this. The /cast !Auto Shot /cast Steady Shot macro is semi-broken and unreliable (Sometimes it does 2x Steady, sometimes just 1, seems random and/or lag dependant), but not the direct reason a lot of hunters are seeing dps increases. The actual culprit is that a 2:1 steady:auto rotation just ends up being better dps for a lot of hunters, due to better scaling from gear on SS than AS. I, like many others, had simply written off the 2:1 rotation long ago, but with current gear and mechanics, it seems worth a look. Math proof as follows, ignoring flat % increases like crit, hit, or talents, for simplicity's sake:
For a 1:1 rotation it's 1 steady and 1 auto shot, which happens at the rate of your hasted weapon speed.
With my gear, using Veteran's Rifle:
Now, for a 2:1 rotation, it's 2 steadys and 1 auto shot, which happens at 1.5 (Global Cooldown from first SS) + 1.09 (Hasted SS cast time) + 0.5 (Auto Shot cast time)
Which, for my same gear, using my slightly slower Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer:
Theorycrafting using a Vengeful Gladiator's Rifle:
As you can see, a 2:1 rotation with a slower weapon beats out a 1:1 rotation with a faster weapon, mostly due to about a 10% better scaling with AP. The 2:1 scales terribly with haste, though, compared to the 1:1, and uses about 30% more mana per second. When iAotH procs, the 1:1 gets 677 dps compared to 640 on the 2:1. In the end, it looks like a viable alternative for hunters in a mana-rich environment (Judgement of Wisdom up) and makes using the slow end-game weapons possible.

The most unfortunate thing, currently, is that I can't get any macro to do a perfect 2:1 rotation, everything I've tried bugs out and ends up using a single steady every so often, so all I have is theorycrafting, no empirical evidence at the moment. What people are seeing with the /cast !auto /cast steady macro seems to support this, though, it was the ~3.1 rotation speed when the double steadys were being cast that was throwing me off at first, thinking steady didn't delay auto anymore, before I realized that it was merely the haste on the steady shaving time off the expected 3.5 second rotation.

*Lights the Cheeky signal*

Any chance we could see a 2:1 rotation added to the spreadsheets, assuming nobody finds flaw with my math?

 

Trohck

The flaw is there's no reason to use a 2:1 rotation over a 1.5:1 rotation. (i.e. Steady Arcane Auto Steady Auto repeat). With a 2:1 rotation you are sacrificing a significant amount of Auto Shot DPS.

 

Elfalora

I did some testing after hearing that the new macro still does more DPS than the old /castsequence macro.

Using a 2.1 bow with paper doll speed 1.49 (AotV and no DST). The speed is picked so that I have limited chance to chain Steady and Auto would cast pretty much everytime.

With th new macro:
/cast !Auto shot
/cast Steady shot

With the old macro:
/castsequence reset=3 Auto Shot, Steady Shot

It is noticeable that both Steady and Auto took longer to fire. This is a known artifact of /castsequence that latency is accounted for in between each action, presumably waiting for the previously action to be confirmed by the server.


Here comes the more interesting result with my new new macro:

/cast Steady Shot

What does this mean? /cast !Auto shot is likely not what caused the DPS increase. The change with specials no longer clobbering Auto does.

This might mean that if you can fire Steady during the .5s Auto casting window, you can probably shave off the latency/human error in the equation for optimal weapon speed (assuming it is not higher than .5s). There is no need to spam the macro, since it would lead to chain Steadys eating more mana than necessary.

 

Trohck

Elfalora: what? Can you explain what the point of your "new new" macro is? A single shot cast is just manual weaving. This has been going on for a long time. I don't see how this is making things any better.

 

Elfalora

Yes, it is just manual weaving. I just put it in the same macro with KC/etc.

It gets better because you can now time more aggressively during the same .5s Auto window which used to clobber your Auto. Basically, you can tighten up your rotation nicely.

 

Snipette

So with this working the way it does in a 1:1.5 rotation would it be better to shoot my specials before the steadies to ensure that they don't get pushed back until after it auto shoots again?