Axelrod

I use Sorren's Timers because it also displays a global cooldown bar as well. And I'm able to group my bars together, so I group my autoshot and global cooldown bars together while chunking the rest into it's own area as seen here:
http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/653...7120212yk4.jpg

Question about Quartz, because I'm at work and I'm unable to see for myself, does the feature listed below work for the hunter's autoshot range as well? Also, do you have a picture of what the global cooldown looks like?

 

• Glaurong

Quartz has an auto shot cast bar and a global cool spark. You really don't need anything else.

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

 

Axelrod

I've gathered that from reading the previous post and looking at the UI page. I'm interested in finding out what this "spark" looks like because I can't find it in any of the UI pages and I'm stuck at work at the moment. And as I've asked, does the out-of-range recoloring also work on the autoshot bar or only for spells that have casting time?

 

Revv

I was wondering why my Quartz bar was turning white at certain times. It seems that's the colour it changes to when something enters your dead zone, or exceeds your maximum range.

The GCD "spark" is (well, for me), a very thin bar at the top of my cast bar, that is dark in colour, with the usual "spark" (what shows the current casting time of the current spell). I don't recall if it goes from left to right, or right to left, but I am sure you get the picture. Very useful to know, so you aren't spamming keys needlessly.

 

Forar

Thank you, I'll be sure to grab one of those tonight.

For cooldowns, I'm currently using OmniCC from Curse, which has suited me well for most classes. For castbars, I use ECastingbar, though I've been thinking of dropping it since the base UI and ArcHud2 do the same thing.

The Beast Mastery "Steady Shot / KC" macro alone looks like it'll be invaluable, but I'm not sure I'll sweat anything much more advanced, and just try to time Arcane Shots and Multishots where applicable.

 

Ezzy

I'm still baffled by quartz's config. no idea how to move the bars where i want to Maybe i'll figure it out once my headache goes away

 

The Iron Colonel

No, I don't use stopcasting (which will terminate the autoshot timer). I also never said manual timing improved my latency - what I said was that my dps goes up when I time things manually. I suspect the reason is related to my relatively high latency and the interaction of high latency with cast sequence macros. You can read into that however you like, but that's all I said. If you do more damage with a cast sequence macro, use it. I, however, have found otherwise and do not use it for that reason. I also prefer to believe that getting better at manually timing shots will make you a better hunter (perhaps that what came across as confusing in my original post?), however, that is obviously a subjective statement.

 

◊ Lactose

With a castsequence macro there's no way of pre-emptively starting a cast before a previous cast is finished client-side.
With a high latency, you can benefit from timing this manually, starting your next cast after the server knows the spell to be cast, but before the client has gotten this information. A castsequence macro waits for the server to confirm the action, then sends the next spell.

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

 

◊ vank

I think one of the 'benefits' of being a Marksman hunter (I'm BM now) was that I had to really concentrate and pay attention to casting to maximize my dps. The fact that you have to do this to begin with is another argument. But I agree with The Colonel above; I think it made me a better player knowing how the timing affected things. For what it's worth, I use a macro now as it allows me a bit of freedom in maintaining my situational awareness better (read- keeping my pet alive).

 

Trohck

But is this true even if you're using a single-action castsequence? Ex.: /castsequence Steady Shot. To spell things out explicitly, here's the macro I'm talking about:

/cast Kill Command
/castsequence Steady Shot

This is what I weave between autos. If there is an improvement available for high-latency, that improvement should correspond to low-latency until your reaction time exceeds the latency gain, yes?

I guess what I'm saying is I don't see how this is possible. If it's another "I'll take a small DPS hit to enjoy playing more" like IAotH, I can understand. But why would your DPS go up when you time things manually? I must be misunderstanding a mechanic somewhere.

I absolutely prefer to play without macros and I do think that understanding the mechanics before you use them is crucial. But I live in the unfortunate world where latency has a severe impact on my DPS and as far as I can tell spamming macros is the best way to surmount that unless you can be accurate to the tenth of the second, which I think most people can't.

 

Revv

In testing further timings of why I am clobbering my auto shots, I think I found a piece of my log that does not have Quick Shots enabled.

Steady Shot cast time is 1.087s (1.50 / 1.15 / 1.20)
Auto Shot cast time is 2.100s (2.9 / 1.15 / 1.20) (Do NOT interrupt last 0.5s)

So, latest Steady Shot can be started is 2.100s - 0.500s - 1.087s = 0.513s after previous Auto Shot? (Not 100% sure on this.)

Is that really true? (0.500s is the "cast" of Auto Shot). I have 0.513s to begin a Steady Shot after an Auto Shot? Wow. (My average ping is 250-300ms.)

The lines beginning below with ".." are simple calculations of the Steady Shot hitting, minus the cast time of 1.087 seconds. (Hmm .. arrow flight time? Ick, not going there.)

The numbers on the right are the times between auto shots. Looks like I really clobbered that 3rd one.

Just trying to see if my work here is correct, and I have to really work on getting that Steady Shot started within 0.513 seconds of an Auto Shot finishing. Appreciate any thoughts/corrections.

 

The Iron Colonel

I think we're discussing different things here. When I say timing manually, I mean I'm not using a cast sequence macro that has both steady and auto in it (unlike yours). What you are doing is essentially timing your shots manually and linking KC to steady in one keystroke - which is different from what I considering to be macroing your shots (macroing shots, to me, is putting /castsequence steady shot, auto shot in to forcibly prevent clipping).

I think it's just a miscommunication.

 

◊ Lactose

You're forgetting quiver / ammo pouch haste.


As for the /castsequence macro with only one ability, I don't think it's affected by what I said, but I'm not sure. Why do you even use a /castsequence instead of just a plain old /cast?
(You can throw Kill Command in a /castrandom, which, as far as I've heard, allows you to start both Kill Command and Steady Shot at the same time, if they're both available.)

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

 

Trohck

I haven't tried /castrandom, but it doesn't seem like it would work. If you cast a Steady Shot first, you can't cast KC until it completes.

The reason I use /castsequence is because it's calculated server-side and thus lets me avoid a "tick" of latency vs. just using two casts. I think it's similar to what you were getting at with /castrandom. Here's how:

/cast Kill Command
/cast Steady Shot

What will happen when I spam this macro? Let's assume latency L and macro spam:

0.00 Hit macro
0.0L Server receives command, KC executes, server tells client spell already casting so Steady can't be cast
0.0L Hit macro, client says neither spell can be cast since
0.2L Client allows again
0.2L Hit macro
0.3L Server receives command, steady starts casting

Now let's try it with this:

/cast Kill Command
/castsequence Steady Shot

0.00 Hit macro
0.0L Server receives command, KC executes, tries to cast steady shot but can't because KC is currently being cast
0.0L Hit macro, client says KC can't be cast but resends Steady due to /castsequence
0.2L Server receives /castsequence steady, steady starts casting

Let me know if I've made a mistake here or if this doesn't make sense.

 

• Glaurong

I think most people operate under the assumption that any slash command is first inspected by your WoW see if it makes sense to pass on to the server. Was it documented that /castsequence is passed on and evaluated by the server no matter what?

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

 

HgizmO

Then what is the best BM macro?

 

Sheshini

I play with a latency of 500-600.
2.52 att speed

I am using castsequence
/castsequence reset=combat/target Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Multi-Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot

Ive been hitting dr boom the last couple of nights to see if i can improve on this macro. It has been clipping my autoshots whenever i do 2 specials before an autoshot.

I tried using another method which is macroing my arcane shot and multi as follows
arcane : /stopcasting /cast Arcane shot
multi :/stopcasting /cast Multi-shot

I did manual threading of shots and hit the macros when the casting bar of steady is nearly filled, but sometimes it stops my autoshot completely. Im using quartz.

I also tried using a macro of only auto/steady.
I kept spamming the auto/steady macro and hit my arcane/multi macro in between. Doesnt work -_-.

Any comments would be appreciated thanks!!!

 

• Glaurong

/stopcasting is a tricky one.

Auto shot does have a cast time, it is just hidden, if you happen to hit /stopcasting during that cast it will stop your autoshot. If you hit it while auto shot is cooling down, you are fine. You can verify this yourself if you like simply type /stopcasting immediately after you fire a shot, nothing will happen. Then make a macro with just /stopcasting in it, mash that and see where you stop firing.

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

 

Groggan

Ok, so I'm not the best with timing maths so I figured I'd just ask, does the following timeline with a 2.52 auto-shot speed for a shot rotation appear accurate?

Is that right? Assuming no lag I mean, obviously. I ask, because if it is then it would seem that you can eek out a tiny bit better shots-per-second with that rotation than the traditional
auto-steady-mutli-auto-steady-arcane-auto-steady-auto-steady rotation, even with the slight delay to auto4.

 

Ailee

Multi has a 0.5 second cast time and you'll never get two shots to fire at the same time. Lag or no lag.

Edit: You're also forgetting GCD's on abilities like Arcane shot.

 

Groggan

That's what I figured, and I forgot about multi's .5 sec cast time...hmmm...back to the drawing board.

 

zork

I liked the illustration but I needed some dynamic for them so I programmed a little script.

hunter shots

To see if your rotation will work look at the auto shot timer and find out if it may get delayed.

p.s. This is Theorycraft you will need to test it at Dr. Boom yourself.

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

 

zork

I want to quote what Throck wrote because its important. On my warrior I have the same problem. I cannot push the "shieldblock" (2) plus the "heroic strike" (Q) plus the "special" (E/R/F) button at the same time, the Client will deny it. This is indeed a problem since you sometimes have to smash the buttons multiple times to do it.
The only thing to get around this is to have /stopcasting in your macro. This works wonders but has a major drawback. It will cancel hunter shots as it cancels the heroic strike queue.

Kill Command can delay the sequence but if you put Kill Command behind the sequence the shots can delay Kill Command. (I could not activate Kill Command why casting Steady though!)

CastSequence or Cast have have the same effect if a spell is just used on the Client which is not canceled with stopcasting you get a delay that depends on how fast you can click one button (thus a tip from pro hunter (not myself) put the macro on mousewheel)

I think thats the point: Theory is fine but at the end you will have to test everything out since you will have some sort of delay in every shot. Dr. Boom will tell the truth

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

 

Breezee

Without reading to much of this post, im unsure abaut what the "optimal" attackspeed would be.

Where i dont gain anymore from haste at all because gcd prevents me from casting another steady shot etc.

Im asking because im not sure how much haste gear that i actually need as BM.

Im using the Steady, auto macro with KC in it.<