mongbatstar

Thanks for the time you took to reply.

Is this something new? Looking at the information presented in this thread i was under the impression that any cast had to be finished in advance of auto shot being completed, sorrens easy rotation highlights this as the red portion of the autoshot icon. Is this no longer important with the new server-side queuing of casts?

Essentially so long as I cast SS/arc within 0.5 secs of my autoshot swing I will not be punished?

 

Bikiniwax

Has anyone been able to test on the PTR 2.3.3 yet so see what if anything has changed?

 

ligghtpro

Yes, this is a new feature as of 2.3.2, making manual shot rotations far easier and more accurate. Just to note, Quiggy may be wrong, with your auto-shot timer being 1.45 and your hasted steady shot cast time being 1.09, you should be able to just spam the macro and get a perfect 1:1 rotation, since the global cooldown should prevent you from starting the next steady before the auto is supposed to go off, and the un-interruptable 0.5 cast time on auto should prevent any latency issues. I can't say for sure, I'm trying to find a Precisely Calibrated Boomstick to test this with, but having no luck. Anyone want to copy one over to the Test server for me? :P

 

• Tsook

I have a [Hurricane] and a [Precisely Calibrated Boomstick]. Happy to help test, but I'm not around until probably Tuesday. I'll at least get the PTR copy started.

 

Arcazua

OK, I got someone linking me to this thread from TKAsomething. I'm not a normal EJ reader, but some of you might remember my name from long in the past. (Hunter AEP, pre-BC weapon spreadsheets.) Anyway, I'm trying to play catch-up on the situation. In the event this might help someone else just tuning in, let me see if I got this all straight, and then I'm gonna toss in my own experience with Dr. Boom tonight.


What's going on, as near as I can understand it: (Please correct if wrong, but I'm writing it this way because I know how much MY head spins when I try to read through pages of an EJ forum thread to just understand WTF people are talking about.)

It used to be that you needed to wait for a moment after a special shot before auto would fire. If you didn't wait, you didn't get an auto shot. Specifically, there is a 0.5 seconds wind-up for autoshot that is completely transparent, and starts 0.5 seconds before your autoshot delay should be complete. However, now, instead, once that 0.5 seconds initiates, the autoshot WILL complete regardless of what happens. It just needs to be free to initialize, as opposed to being mid-steady shot. What this means is that you can cast a shot during that 0.5 window and the auto will still fire, as opposed to being forced into waiting for that duration to end. Manually timing steady shot rotations, previously extremely arduous because you had to have a rhythm that considered this null period, can very nearly spam the steady shot key. (In fact, I'll discuss my experiences on this.)

Because autoshot is more or less guaranteed to go off at the end of the steady shot it would be prepared to fire after, some of us have been looking into alternate rotations to the traditionally accepted best rotations. (e.g. Auto-steady-auto-steady... for BM, aka 1:1, and auto-steady-arcane/multi-auto-steady-A-S-X-A-S... for MM and SV, aka 1:1.5 or 3:2.) At first, I was completely baffled at the notion that a 2:1 (auto-steady-steady-A-S-S (lol)) rotation could even exist. But after considering the way things operate now, it does make some sense:

Using old rotations, you would either reduce your shot speed to the point where you could fire auto very nearly in synch with what would amount to wailing on your steady key so that you can very nearly do just that. Theoretically, you could be firing 2 shots every 1.5 seconds if you can get your autoshot at least that fast. This is 1.33 shots per second. (Previously, the lower bound on this was crudely around 1.8 seconds due to the 0.5 second waiting period after a hasted steady shot, which meant you were just scraping in at 1 shot per second.)

The 1:1.5 rotation that non-BM hunters tried to use to make optimal use of dead time would try to make the steady cast time 2/3 of their auto speed and squeeze another special in-between. Because of GCD, there was a strict lower bound on this technique that still has not changed, although it is actually feasible to reach it, unlike before. In (at best) 4.5 seconds you can fire 5 shots this way. This is 1.11 shots per second. (Previously, with a gap between the middle special and autoshot, it was slower than the beast master's 1:1 -- perhaps 0.9 shots per second.)

Enter the 2:1 (or 1:2.) If you have an autoshot speed that is anything at or under 3.0 seconds, you can complete an autoshot after every 2 steady shots if you ram them up next to one another. If you use this style, you'll get 3 shots off every 3 seconds, minus a little bit of error. But more or less you will get 1 shot per second. Because old shot patterns were at less than 1 shot per second, it would appear to be a damage increase from the old and yet not a damage increase from an adjusted hunter using their same cycle.

Unfortunately, reality rears its head in the world of theory, and we're left wondering why.



Now, where exactly this story picks up from here, I'm not sure. I wasn't able to completely follow everything everyone said, but prior to trying to make sense of it, I went out to Dr. Boom and played around. I am a surv hunter, so no 20% haste. I took 3 weapons with me to Dr. Boom, a 2.7, a 2.9, and old Ashjre'thul at 3.4 -- each with an appropriate quiver or ammo pouch. I ran a cycle of 1:1 with each, then a cycle of 1.5:1, and two attempts with a 2:1. (Two because I needed to get experience with it.) All data was collected shooting completely naturally with no mods or macros. So my only timing device at all was the cast bar. I let Recap collect info for me. Any time there was an inconsistency between tests, I noted it.


Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle (2.7 delay, effective 2.35 speed)
1:1 - 603 DPS (this was errantly done without Hunter's Mark)
1.5:1 - 721 DPS after removing 2/3 of multi-shot damage. (839 with secondary damage from multi)
2:1 #1 - 682 DPS
2:1 #2 - 665 DPS
Result: 2:1 is detrimental from the expected 1.5:1 being superior.

Recoilless Rocker Ripper X-54 (2.9 delay, 2.52 speed...it's my spare gun if the WSR breaks.)
1:1 - 632 DPS
1.5:1 - 720 DPS. (837 pre-adjustment)
2:1 #1 - 639 DPS
2:1 #2 - 743. Awesome crit string at beginning and I had to cut off prematurely because Dr. Boom was dead. Test only lasted 2:15 rather than roughly 3:00 for the others. So I did one more.
2:1 #3 - 615 DPS
Result: 2:1 is even worse here, except with an unbelievable crit run? Gonna blame this one on sample size. Maybe I'll try again later.

Ashjre'thul, Crossbow of Smiting (3.4 delay, 2.96 speed)
1:1 - 535 DPS
1.5:1 - 650 DPS. (742 pre-adjustment)
2:1 #1 - 652 DPS.
2:1 #2 - 634 DPS.
Result: Marginal improvement over 2:1, if any.


Some additional comments, however:
* Timing 1:1 by hand with a delay is never completely easy, but generally I could wait til the cast bar "completed" and then pushed the button, and it would usually work. (Depending on shot speed, of course.) Now I find myself able to push it as the bar should actually hit the end of the meter, rather than reacting to the "complete" message.
* Timing the other two shot cycles is incredibly easy seeing as you can literally just wail on the buttons until they go off. Well, almost. In the 2:1, you can wail for one shot and then you have to hold back and "time" yourself like I did in the 1:1 in order to get auto to fire between the two steadies. And yes, this was the case for fast and slow weapon alike.
* I was really hoping that Ashjre'thul, of all weapons, would see a noticeable increase in this shot cycle. It didn't really. Meanwhile, the mana consumption rate on a 2:1 is about on par with a 1.5:1 that is using rank 1 multi and max arcane. (I ran my tests each until hitting out of mana.)

Now, I know my testing method is highly error-prone, both in terms of potential hidden variables and simply in terms of sample size, so maybe it isn't all that useful, but hopefully somebody will be able to do some good with this post.


Something I would like someone to explain to me, however, is why a Beast Master would be interested in SPEEDING UP and trying to do a 2:1. I realize we're still learning the specifics about what's happening with this delay period, and that it appears that we're kinda queueing the next action within half a second, and uncertain the effect this has on the global cooldown, but I still don't see what a very fast shot speed is going to benefit from in trying to squeeze 2 steadies. But just about everyone posting here seems to be (a) a beast master and (b) using some kind of macro, which are two things I don't have much experience with using.

 

Omegatron

I am BM. I posted this in a different thread.

Beast Mastery Bible

As to why a BM hunter would want to use more steady shots, the ranged weapon normalization that happen long ago... all steady shots act if 2.9 speed bow/gun. If the BM hunter used Cheeky's spreadsheet and got the gear, they are using a 2.7 or 2.6 speed.

That is my guess.

Shot rotation wise, I stick with 1:1 my mana can last well in long boss fights. I think the more steady, multi or arcane you weave in will up short term dps, but really kill your mana and destroy your long term dps on a boss fight. Then again its all based on your gear, and what boss fight you are on.

I often think one thing that people forget is how long can you maintain the shot rotation to do max damage. Some things look great on paper, but its only on paper.

The noob who took a guess has spoken.

 

ligghtpro

There's a couple things that you may have a little off, Arcazua. For one thing, the raw number of shots per second isn't a good indicator of dps, as you'll get harder-hitting auto-shots with a slower weapon to make up the difference. Another thing is that the 0.5 cast time on auto still exists, it's just un-interruptible, making manual rotations easy to perfect. Unhasted MM and SV hunters are still capped at 1.8 sec rotation on a 1:1, a 4.8 sec rotation on a 1:1.5, and a 3.3 rotation on a 1:2 (Notice the 1:1.5 wastes the least amount of time between specials, thus the highest dps). What makes BM hunters different is the extra haste on a Steady Shot, which makes the rotations around 1.6 for a 1:1, 4.6 for a 1:1.5, and 3.1 for a 2:1. The wasted time between specials is much smaller for us and, during a quick shots proc, disappears entirely. At this point we only have to be concerned with matching weapon speeds to our rotations, and without fast endgame weapons, BM hunters are realizing the 1:1 rotation is slowly dying, and that the 1:1.5 or 1:2 will give us much better dps with our current weapon selection.

Right now, theorycrafting is trying to catch up with the in-game reality and the subtle mechanics changes we just underwent, which I still don't think we fully understand (I'm still seeing steady shots regularly occurring faster than the 1.5 sec GCD in a lot of people's logs and it's killing me to figure out exactly why and how).

 

matthra

I've been something of a lurker on these boards for a while now, and I've been following the mechanics change since the patch. I've seen quite a few suggestions put forward but I think the key facts are:

1.) Its still possible to 100% clip.
2.) People appear to have been starting steady shots during auto shots .5 casting and not clipping the auto shot.

Some people believe a server side queue is possible (a popular solution but it hasn't been right before) but that doesn't explain the combat logs mentioned earlier in this thread where someone appears to be casting steady during their autoshot. Since we can reasonably expect that casting a steady during an autoshot would cancel the autoshot, we have to assume the autoshot portion already completed.

To toss my hat into the ring for solutions, is it possible that haste is affecting the .5 second auto shot cast time?

**Edited for English**

 

Rokh

Like I said earlier this this thread, this has already been explained. It's because if you delay a steady shot by casting it at the end of an auto, the GCD starts early, when you press the button, not when the actual steady shot starts to cast. This could lead to chain casting 2 steadys in as little as 2 seconds or so, depending on how fast your second steady shot casts.

 

mongbatstar

just wanted to express my thanks to the people who answered my questions.

 

ligghtpro

That's possible, but using a spam-macro, I would've expected about a 0.5 second difference being made, the same as the auto-shot cast time. Instead, I'm only getting about a 0.2 second difference on average, which doesn't really match up with anything I can think of. *Shrug* Maybe you're right and I'm just being thrown off by latency or something.

Don't think so... Grabbed a fast weapon with quiver haste, Serpent's Swiftness, quick shots proc, and rapid fire all going at once, never got an auto to follow a steady by any less than 0.5 seconds.

 

nosound

Hello everyone. I've been tracking these forums for long time now, and now is the time to add some knowledge to this "bank". Playing actively PvP I see many times such a picture (I've got an auto shot cast bar). I hop off my mount being almost on a shooting range from my enemy and first of all I start casting an Aimed Shot. But before reaching a shooting range I always right-click my enemy to engage in combat and have my auto shots on. So the point is - I start with Aimed Shot casting and... My very first attack is Auto Shot which fires IN the time of Aimed Shot casting, Somewhat 0.3-0.5 seconds after I hop off the mount.
That's about PvP and what can I say about PvE now. My shot rotation macro looks like that:
With that macro I start off with engaging in combat and my first shot is always an Auto Shot and it fires within a Steady Shot cast time as I spam my macro.
And here comes the question Is it going to be nerfed? (Yes, if they are going to change this, they will nerf hunters, as I see my dps increased)

 

Maynard

Dismounting is client-side, so it'll be independent of your ping and should occur instantly (on your screen). Auto-shot will take as long to cast as your ping, so it should occur ~0.3s after dismounting. Aimed will also occur 0.3s after dismounting, but the cast bar will appear instantly.

In short, the auto is actually firing immediately before the aimed starts; latency is what creates the illusion of auto firing 'during' aimed.

 

Arcazua

Gonna use quotes rather than [ quote ]s since I'm doing a few here.

"There's a couple things that you may have a little off, Arcazua. For one thing, the raw number of shots per second isn't a good indicator of dps, as you'll get harder-hitting auto-shots with a slower weapon to make up the difference."

Understood. I realize it's a very crude form of generalization to count shots per second, but auto and steady are "close enough" that I think it's reasonable to at least look at SPS as a starting frame. If we can conclude that something gets superior SPS to another technique, then we can look at optimal weapons and discuss if those are equivalent shots being used or not.


"Another thing is that the 0.5 cast time on auto still exists, it's just un-interruptible, making manual rotations easy to perfect."

Perhaps I wasn't clear, but I understand this myself.


"Unhasted MM and SV hunters are still capped at 1.8 sec rotation on a 1:1, a 4.8 sec rotation on a 1:1.5, and a 3.3 rotation on a 1:2 (Notice the 1:1.5 wastes the least amount of time between specials, thus the highest dps)."

You're going to have to explain where these numbers come from. Are we still talking a domain of 2.6-3.1 speed weapons? Because if a marks or surv hunter can somehow get the shot speed of a 2.6 auto to levels where they can actually reach the theoretical optimal, their steady shot should be firing plenty quickly. (Yes, you did say "unhasted," but if you want to claim no non-quiver haste, the fastest they'll do a 1:1 is more like 2.26 seconds.)


"Right now, theorycrafting is trying to catch up with the in-game reality and the subtle mechanics changes we just underwent, which I still don't think we fully understand."

Glad I'm not the only one confused then. =)

 

ligghtpro

These numbers are what you theoretically would get with just quiver haste on Steady Shot (1.3) + the 0.5 auto-shot cast time, and ignoring the availabilty of weapons, the "lower bound" you'd mentioned in your post. What I was trying to get at is that you cannot "start" a steady shot during auto shot's 0.5 sec cast time. You can queue one up during it, but it won't start the cast until the auto is finished, unlike where a lot of people seem to think the steady starts during the auto cast. (If you look at my test where I was timing steady manually, without even quiver haste, I was always either: A. Too early, and delayed the auto, B. Too late, and had a gap after the auto, or C. Got a steady shot exactly 1.5 seconds after the auto.)

 

◊ Lactose

My thoughts:

AUTO SHOT
- Auto Shot has a 0.5 second casting time. Not affected by hastes, interrupted by moving.
- Auto Shot starts casting 0.5 seconds before its cooldown is up. I.e. if Auto Shot's current fire rate is once per 2.2 seconds, Auto Shot starts casting 1.7 seconds after the previous Auto Shot.
- Auto Shot is not affected by the global cooldown. It can both start casting and fire while the global cooldown is active.

STEADY SHOT
- Steady Shot has a 1.5 second casting time. Affected by hastes.
- Steady Shot invokes the 1.5 second global cooldown upon activation.
- Steady Shot has no cooldown, but a cast cannot be started while the global cooldown is active.

AUTO/STEADY
- If a Steady Shot cast is started immediately before an Auto Shot cast starts: Steady Shot starts casting, global cooldown becomes active, Auto Shot cast is pushed back until Steady Shot is finished casting. Auto Shot fires 0.5 seconds after Steady Shot fires.
- If a Steady Shot cast is started during* an Auto Shot cast: Global cooldown activates, but Steady Shot does not start casting before Auto Shot cast is complete.
- If a Steady Shot cast is started immediately after an Auto Shot cast is finished: Steady Shot casts normally, with no effect on Auto Shot.


*Since Steady Shot is only limited by its own casting and the global cooldown, starting the global cooldown earlier than the cast sometimes allows specials to be chained together, hitting their target with a smaller gap than 1.5 seconds.

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

 

ligghtpro

Ok, finally proving Rokh and everyone else right and myself a noob. With quiver haste and serpent's swiftness, I'm manually timing a steady shot as early as I can during an auto shot's cast time, then spamming arcane shot while the steady is casting.

Arcane shot firing perfectly with the end of a steady shot, barely more than a second after the auto shot fires, it definitely is the case that the global cooldown starts during the auto-shot cast time, and ends up out-of-synch from when steady shot actually starts. Sorry I wasn't going to believe it until I could prove it to myself, but this definitely explains some of the odd 3steady:2auto rotations some people have been getting with "/cast steady shot" macros.

That being said, Lactose has it spot-on.

 

• Glaurong

These are the same conclusions I've come to. Most likely because the GCD is still client side and the latency fix/server side queue is sever side.

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

 

Gearknight

Given Lactose's conclusions, which all seem reasonable and correct to me, this would be the proper way to execute the 3 steady : 2 auto rotation:

After auto shot 0 fires, immediately cast steady shot 1
After steady shot 1 fires, wait until exactly 0.5s before auto shot 2 fires to begin steady shot 2
Steady shot 2's GCD will begin before auto shot 2, and it's cast bar will begin exactly after auto shot 2
Begin steady shot 3 as soon as steady shot 2's cast bar and GCD have both finished
After steady shot 3 fires, auto shot 2 will probably already be waiting to fire
--repeat--

Given that one was a perfect shot rotating machine, and no lag existed, the optimal conditions for this would be steady shot hasted to 1.0s (so that the GCD and cast bar of steady shot 2 finish simultaneously, and the GCD of steady shot 3 finishes simultaneously with auto shot 2 firing), and auto shot hasted to 2 seconds (so that there is no gap between any GCDs). This is achieved for BM hunters with a small amount of static haste (~8%) on top of Quiver + Serpent Swiftness, and a weapon speed of 3.0. It is achieved for non-BM hunters with a large amount of static haste (~30%), and the same 3.0 weapon speed.

If done perfectly, you'll fire 3 steadies and 2 autos every 4.5s.

Given that people aren't perfect and latency exists, the optimal conditions are more like steady shot hasted to 1.2s (taking advantage of starting steady shot 1's GCD 0.3s before auto Shot 1) and auto shot hasted to 2.3s (leaving 0.2s between each GCD). BM hunters already have too much haste, but non-BM hunters will achieve this with about 8% of static haste and a weapon speed of 2.8 or 2.9.

In order to prevent the /cast steady /cast !auto macro from doing more than 2 steadies between each auto, your latency + GCD + 0.5s must be greater than your auto shot cast speed. This ensures that when steady shot 1 finishes, it's impossible to insert steady shot 2 before the cast time of auto shot 1 begins.

I haven't put any thought into where kill command can be inserted without disrupting anything, but between steady shot 2 and steady shot 3 might be a good place.

I (0/20/41 with no haste gear) am going to shelve my sunfury for my wolfslayer and try out the /cast steady /cast !auto macro, to see if the fast weapon speed (making the aforementioned condition true when latency > 348 ms) gives a proper 3 steady : 2 auto rotation. If so, I'm probably going to be enjoying increased mana longevity, my racial +1% crit, and perhaps even increased DPS as well.

 

Bikiniwax

Since Blizz has already stated that they have updated macros (not sure if it was only /castsequence or not) in patch 2.3.3 (which is on the PTR right now), this will probably all change when it goes live.

 

ligghtpro

The last bits of testing I've done were all on the Test server, and nothing has changed for our mechanics from live that I can find.

(Oh, and Gearknight, /cast !auto shot in a macro does nothing but cause animation errors, you're better off removing it)