Fendryl

I believe I recall what you're talking about, it was actually just a misconception. Most people during BC beta & even a ways into BC release hadn't ever used, much less had the need for, shot timers; as such it 'felt' like you were getting an instant shot after a steady, but really what the case was was generally people clipping.

 

Moredhel

There seems to be a lot of very knowledgable people on here so I thought I would just verify my shot rotation on here

At current I'm using a 2.8 bow (and going to a 3.00 one soon)
15% quiver as always and cenarion revered arrows

my current rotation for dps goes:
serpent, arcane, steady, steady, arcane, steady, steady

the cooldowns on these seem to fit perfectly and I'm doing pretty good dps
for certain bosses I switch serpent to scorpid to make the tanks life a little easier

I've tried just spamming steady but it doesn't seem to do as much although it does preserve a lot more mana

any thoughts ?

 

Sympa

Please read before posting.

 

Stryker159

alot of good information here. just reading up on it for when i start raiding on my hunter. Just one thing i want to check to see if you have considered it.

thanks to the removal of the deadzone, we can shoot from 6 yards away. Through my testing on my 62 hunter, it is possible to sit at 6 yards, drop an immolation trap and continue to shoot uninturrupted (unless you clip the autoshot) and still have the trap affect the target.

On bosses that are friendly to hunters sitting at 6 yards away (which i doubt there are many of), has anyone thaught of whether Immolation trap would net you a DPS boost?

from rough looks it does about double the damage of Serpent Sting in the same amount of time, just has the 30 seconds cooldown. then there is the 2 seconds activation time. then whether traps are affected by spell or physical hit ratings as to how often it would be assumed to hit.

i'd say test it as base skills, then see how the effectiveness increase for traps and the mana reduction/CD reduction talents effect the DPM. Be interesting to see if it is a gain for hunter to be pirched behind the rogues when fighting some bosses.

 

Mancer

Immolation Trap costs 305mana and does ~1200 damage for me (Based on 2300AP), that's about 3 times the cost of a Steady Shot and I think that's the piece of information you're ignoring - mana. I know I don't use serpent sting because it's not mana efficient, so I wouldn't be using Immolation trap either.

My steady shot hits for about 6-700 damage, and crits for ~1500, all for 110 mana, compared to that Immolation trap is not a great substitute to use my GCD on.

If you have unlimited mana (ie chain potting and a spriest in your group) it might be viable, at 55% or more crit rating it's flat out worse than Steady Shot but that's not a realistic value for any hunter I know of (45% crit and 4pc T5 maybe?).

Steady shot also scales better than Immolation Trap with RAP and you're also using up another debuff slot on the boss, if you raid with 5 to 6 SPriests/Warlocks it's definitely worse than any of their DoT's that it would be pushing off the boss.

 

Kaladian

I agree it would be a huge waste of mana but the real problem has to do with GCD and the .5 sec hidden autoshot cast time. There is only so much you can do without clipping your autoshot and immolate trap isnt one of them. If there wasnt the .5 sec casting time for autoshot and i had a SP then i would use serpent sting and whatever else i could to increase my dps but that isnt the case so i use the small window for pet mend or refreshing mark.

 

Kuberslet

THEORYCRAFTING

As a 41/20/00 My DPS is dependant on both the hunter and the pet critting frequently. I have looked at the BM firing sequence and as any hunter would do have tried to think how I can increase my DPS.

[---------------------][---------------------][---------------------][---------------------] auto shots
[----------------][--] [----------------][--] [----------------][--] [----------------][--] steady, KC

IF you could crit every auto shot and steady shot and thus fire a Kill Command every time u could have virtually no gap space in your firing sequence. Taking lag into account, auto shot cast delay, Kill Command (instant) cast... the factor that would make this feasible, accepting a certainly impossible 100% crit chance, would be the weapon speed. Am I correct?

Then, the perfect ranged weapon speed for a BM would be: Steady shot cast time + kill command cast + lag + auto shot delay. Can someone fairly accurately calculate this for me?

 

Motto

Kill Command has a 5 sec CoolDown, so that messes up with your idea quite a bit.

 

compbry15

I agree with the above poster, you should read at least 1 post in this thread before posting, because your post made it very clear that you didn't. That being said I have to ask, how long does it take you to go OOM? Are you even allowing auto shot to go through? A successful rotation is one that will never override (or clip) an autoshot. It is your highest DPM shot and should not be sacrificed ever. Also, it seems to be largely accepted on these forums that serpent sting is not worth it for most situations.

 

QuiggyB

Fwiw Ive seen some pretty knowledgable folks mention the use of serpent sting in recent days though I havent seen a discussion that breaks down the math and proves its benefit under certain situations.

 

• Keltan

Sorren appears to have made a pretty solid mod that models the whole "Illustrated Shot Rotation" in real-time as you play. http://www.wowace.com/wiki/SEasyRotation


Here is the visual representation of one autoshot. From the left side of the green bar to the right side of the red bar is the time it takes to fire 1 autoshot. The red part is the 0.5 hidden "cast time" of autoshot. The white vertical line marks "now", or where you are in the rotation at this moment. (Obviously you will have to hit your buttons "early" thanks to lag and human reaction time.)


Here we add steadyshot (yellow bar on the bottom.) The yellow bar shows the amount of time it takes to cast Steady Shot. For a perfect shot rotation, you want this yellow bar to always match up with green above it. If it overlaps with the red at all you are clipping or clobbering.


Here you can see what a clean Steady/Auto Shot rotation looks like. As you can see, the yellow Steady Shot bar fits cleanly in the green, and doesn't touch the red bar at all.


Here you can see that I clipped my Steady Shot (it overlaps with the red.) This is a dps loss, since I am delaying my autoshot by fractions of a second here. (The red bar is 0.5 seconds, and I clipped roughly half of it, so I delayed my next autoshot by ~0.25 seconds we will say.)


Here, I didn't just clip my autoshot, I completely clobbered it. My steady shot completely covers the red autoshot, which means that my autoshot doesn't even happen. This is a massive dps loss, and the absolute last thing you want to do.


The 2 bars on the top are for Arcane Shot and Multi-shot (for you Marks and Survival Hunters using a 1:1.5 rotation.) The top purple bar is Multi-shot. The 2nd blue bar is Arcane Shot.

Disclaimer:
1.) I took all these screenshots at the mod's default size (which is huge.) If you want to try it out, I recommend installing it and heading up and beating on Dr. Boom for awhile until you get a hang for the flow of the shot bars, and then scale it down to 0.25-0.4.
2.) Some mod was causing my system to stutter and freeze up every 30 seconds or so last night. I'm not sure if it was this mod (which I had just installed) or one of the mods I have that broke with the patch (Lootlink, Stubby, etc.) So, if this mod is a performance killer we won't want to be running it on raids. It would still be very useful simply to install and play with while soloing to confirm that you are using a clean rotation and are rarely clipping shots (since the graphical representation makes it "stupid easy" to tell when you are.)

 

Niali

The stigma surrounding Serpent Sting isn't about timing; the shot has no cooldown except the global, and fits conveniently in a couple of places. The trouble is that it's very expensive for the damage you get out of it. Compare it to Steady Shot, for example, which does ((Ranged AP * .02) + 150) damage for (110 - Efficiency bonus) mana. Serpent Sting does ((Ranged AP *.01)+ 660) damage for (275 - Efficiency bonus) mana. For this purpose, I'm going to assume Efficiency is maxed, and it really doesn't matter for a DPM comparison, since Efficiency would apply to both shots equally. I also assume both shots are coming from the same weapon.

At 500 AP: Serpent Sting does 710 damage for 247.5 mana (2.87 DPM)
Steady Shot does 250 damage for 99 mana (2.52 DPM)

But we don't have 500 AP. Steady Shot catches up at 713 AP.

At 1000 AP: Serpent Sting does 760 damage for 247.5 mana (3.07 DPM)
Steady Shot does 350 damage for 99 mana (3.54 DPM)

And finally, typical settings for a T5 hunter:

At 2500 AP: Serpent Sting does 910 damage for 247.5 mana (3.67 DPM)
Steady Shot does 650 damage for 99 mana (6.57 DPM)

Serpent Sting is efficient damage right up until you're in, say, UBRS. Above that, it falls off because AP inflates dramatically and Serpent Sting scales up poorly using only that 0.1*RAP.

You can test the efficiency of your own shots with almost any damage meter. At 2600 AP raid-buffed, I get better efficiency with Multi-Shot on a single target than I get with Serpent Sting. It's not even hotkeyed anymore.

 

Niali

<double post deleted>

 

Mitgrim

With the patch 2.3.2 came an undocumented change that completely changes the logics of shot rotation :
The autoshot is now unlinked to the "special" shots, thus there is at the moment almost no more clipping issue with autoshot.

This came after a hunt named Rubeus testing on the french official hunter forum several macro (to validate the "!") and it appeared that the following one was generating a lot more dps (with a bigger mana cost of course) :

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

Spamming this, the combat log is quite strange, but it generates 3 steady shots for 2 non clipping autoshots. Almost perfect optimisation. Autoshot looks like working like the white damage of rogues.


I don't know if it is "working as intended", but if it is, it'a huge up (around 20% extra dps).

This could also make some huge changes in some mechanisms : haste would not be messing cycles and going under 1.0 attack speed maybe viable.

It certainly need some more tests.

 

Daemous

"unlinked"???? Completely changes shot rotation logic?? Do you mean to say that auto shots can fire while in mid-cast of a steady shot? I'm not sure how two autos and three steadies is a good thing... sounds like crazy-clobber.

Currently using the following, but now wondering if it's screwing me up in a new world order:

/castsequence reset=3/target/combat Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/cast [target=pet, dead]; [nopet]; [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

 

Sidewalk

It's unlinked from Arcane Shot for sure, and maybe from Multi-shot.

ie: No Auto-shot delay from doing an Arcane Shot immediately before Auto-Shot casts.

I am not sure about that one post that says the person was able to do 3 SS's for 2 Auto-Shots. It seems like a lone voice where as everyone else seems to be stating somebody different (unless parroting that *one* post).

 

Threepi

Specials are definitely not "unlinked" from Auto Shot.

From some simple Boom testing, what I've noticed is that any shot pressed during the .5 sec Auto Shot cast time just gets put on hold and performed immediately after Auto Shot goes off.

For BM hunters, this could be huge because you have a guaranteed .5 second window to cast Steady Shot and you'll get a perfect rotation. I've been looking this over as a MM/SV hunter, but I'll defintely need more time to look at it.

The problem with a 1:1.5 rotation now is this; in the old system, an Arcane Shot used at .4 seconds left during the Auto Shot cast time would just delay Auto Shot by .1 seconds. In the new system, that Arcane Shot will be pushed back all the way until Auto Shot goes off. So instead of delaying Auto Shot by .1 seconds, you've delayed Arcane Shot by .4 seconds, and pushed back the GCD to match that.

 

Mitgrim

I confirm it works.
If you have an attack speed of 2.5 you will have a 3ss for 2 auto. But it might look strange in your combatlog as it will mostly show a queue of 3 ss followed by the 2 auto, with completely messed timing. It also creates some animation bugs (as it will try to "animate" 1 SS in middle of already casting SS).

 

Xurr

Well so far I haven't seen or been able to test either. What needs to happen is a bunch of testing with both.

these are the 2 macros I'm seeing float about


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


/castsequence reset=3/target Steady Shot, !Auto Shot
/castrandom Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()


both I think will have GCD issues so a manual rotation may be better.

Unfortunately I'm at work and can't test these so if some one wants to run some boom tests it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Sympa

Doesnt work.

 

dnmorton

Dr. Boom testing:

with a Paper Doll listed 2.5 attack speed, no buffs at all, mashing the following:

/cast !Autoshot
/cast Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()


I was able to fire, presumable dependant on my timing, 6 steadyshots with no autoshot intervening, and no "catching up" afterwards.

Also during that testing, while mashing this:

/castsequence reset=3/combat !Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/castrandom Multi-Shot, Arcane Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

I had on 2 occasions 2 multishots fly out simultaneously. I havent yet figured out anything, but thought that data might be useful.

EDIT: After changing that macro from /castrandom to /cast Multi, i have been getting alot more double multis, though i still have no idea why. Gotta go to work now, hope some progress is made.

 

Mitgrim

Sorry, should be : /cast !Auto shot
(my macro is in french initially)

 

Xurr

Oops i missed that too. I edited my other post and fixed it.

 

Edarran

For the sake of clarity, was auto shot able to fire in the middle of the steady cast? If so I highly doubt this would be anything more than a bug, and the double-multi phenomenon seems to support this(at least indirectly.) I also find it unlikely that Blizzard wouldn't announce such a massive change in the patch notes.