The Hunter Lounge - Theorycraft Within

◊ Lactose · 10/10/07, 6:28 PM

The intention of this post is to create a consolidated resource on theorycraft pertaining to Hunters.
It will deal mostly with PvE, but comments on PvP will be added where appropriate. Currently, the thread is under construction, as I am feeling very sick (do I get pity points for this?).

ABBREVIATIONS & TERMS
A list of some abbreviations and terms often used by Hunters:
1:1 - A shot rotation with 1 special per 1 Auto Shot. Also called a priority rotation
1:1.5 - A shot rotation with more than 1 special per 1 Auto Shot, typically 3 specials per 2 Auto Shots
AS - Attack Speed, Arcane Shot, Auto Shot, Aimed Shot (take your pick)
BM - Beast Mastery
BW - Beastial Wrath
GCD - Global Cooldown.
MM - Marksman
MS - Multi-Shot
QS - Quick Shots (Improved Aspect of the Hawk proc)
RF - Rapid Fire
RWS - Ranged Weapon Specialization
SU or Sur - Survival
TBW - The Beast Within

STATS
A brief summary of the stats a Hunter is interested in.

Agility - Increases RAP by 1 and Crit by 0.025%
Crit Rating - Increases Crit by (1/22.08) %
Hit Rating - Increases Hit by (1/15.77) %
Haste Rating - Increases Haste by (1/15.77) %

All hastes affect Auto Shot and Steady Shot. No hastes affect the global cooldown.

HIT & MISS
All raid bosses are considered to be 3 levels higher than you in terms of calculating Hit, Crit, etc.
Against a target 3 levels higher than you, there is an innate 9% Chance to Miss. This can be negated by Hit Rating or Weapon Skill.
There is NOT 'always 1% Chance to miss that cannot be negated'.

WEAPON SKILL
The first 4 points of Weapon Skill each add 0.4% Chance to Hit.
The 5th adds +1.4% Chance to Hit.
Each additional Weapon Skill after 5 adds 0.1% Chance to Hit

So, +3 Weapon Skill gives +1.2% Chance to Hit, +5 Weapon Skill gives +3.0% Chance to Hit, +8 Weapon Skill gives +3.3% Chance to Hit.

Weapon Skill is rounded down. If you e.g. have +7 Weapon Skill Rating (+1.77 Weapon Skill), it will be counted as +1 Weapon Skill for calculations.

TALENTS
Noteworthy talents, and their worth.

Trap mastery
Equal level: 4% chance to resist.
+1 level: 5% chance to resist.
+2 levels: 6% chance to resist.
+3 levels: [Mob] 17% chance to resist / [Player] 13% chance to resist.

Traps always have 1% to be resisted, regardless of your hit chance.
Resist checks happen both on initial application and on heartbeat ticks.

What this means in terms of talent point allocation:
Unless you're trying to trap something that's 3+ levels above you, 2 points in Trap Mastery is useless. Even against a target 2 levels above you, adding a second point does not provide any boost in trap success rate or longevity.

Expose Weakness
Expose Weakness is based on total Agility (after all buffs).
The Raid DPS contribution can be approximated in the following way:
In terms of total DPS, after all modifiers, crits, etc, taken into consideration, 1 AP generally gives 0.2-0.3 DPS per person, usually closer to 0.3.
Based on this, the DPS gain from an Expose Weakness proc can be written as
(Agility/4)*[Physical DPS in Raid]*0.3

Talent builds
Examples of various 'cookie cutter' specs.

Itemization & gems
What to aim for, and why.

Raiding
What to do, what not to do, and how to blame things on others (Misdirection).

Shot rotations
How to do what we want to do (damage). Includes oddities such as haste, global cooldown, weaving specials between Auto Shots, etc.
- 1:1 rotation
- 1:1.5 rotation

If anyone has anything else they'd like to see added, or comments/questions, feel free to leave a post.

Enova · 10/10/07, 6:53 PM

Unless this will override or assimilate the existing hunter threads (BM raiding, SV raiding and Cheeky's spreadsheets), perhaps links to them would be appropriate on the first post.

As Cheeky said:

Originally Posted by Cheeky

[...]
invariably some idiots will post their "Why does my X suck" questions in the wrong place.

Perhaps relevant hunter addon discussions should have their own corner here as well.

EDIT: Not sure what value the old archive threads about hunters may have, but again, a quick link to them can't hurt anyone.

Enova · 10/10/07, 7:15 PM

Hehe, i was aware this is just the drawing board, and that it will be reduced to a tabula rasa when it's no longer work in progress, but it's better we submit our thoughts now rather than find a great idea after the thread has already taken shape.

Oh, and just to play the devil's advocate, how's about a marksmanship thread? Would there be any noteworthy materials to warrant a thread of its own?

◊ Lactose · 10/10/07, 7:56 PM

Updated first part of post, going to bed due to headache.

I'm not sure if 1 thread per spec would be needed.

Furious Lobster · 10/11/07, 1:23 AM

I'd follow Lactose's lead on making 1 general thread as opposed to 3 different ones. While there are playstyle differences based on spec, they are not as large as the ones between enhancement and elemental shamans, for example.

Gear and gem choices might have larger rifts but not so much to warrant opposing threads, in my opinion.

Shandara · 10/11/07, 1:47 AM

Missing a section about pets really, explaining how and why cetain pets and pet skills are best/worst. Why a pet with claw/gore is better than one with just bite, etc..

zork · 10/11/07, 5:27 AM

The paragraph about weapon skill is very interesting.
Can anyone give me some further links on this please? Dwarf hunters using guns would have 3% hit for free? Well that sounds awesome. Does this affect melee weapons too? (I ask this mainly for human tanking warriors) Would they gain the 3% hit bonus for swords too?

cirendil · 10/11/07, 5:40 AM

If possible, a description of the synergy between the hunter and other classes would be great.
What's the best group composition for each spec and who brings what ...

rudedog · 10/11/07, 5:50 AM

Originally Posted by zork

The paragraph about weapon skill is very interesting.
Can anyone give me some further links on this please? Dwarf hunters using guns would have 3% hit for free? Well that sounds awesome. Does this affect melee weapons too? (I ask this mainly for human tanking warriors) Would they gain the 3% hit bonus for swords too?

I believe all the information came from collaborations on these boards but there is a good write up on it which can be found here TKA Something - A World of Warcraft Hunter's Resource

Lindelle · 10/11/07, 8:23 AM

A link to this:

[Hunter] Shot Rotation Illustrated

Would be excellent.

Enova · 10/11/07, 4:58 PM

Originally Posted by Lactose

WEAPON SKILL
The first 4 points of Weapon Skill each add 0.4% Chance to Hit.
The 5th adds +1.4% Chance to Hit.
Each additional Weapon Skill after 5 adds 0.1% Chance to Hit

So, +3 Weapon Skill gives +1.2% Chance to Hit, +5 Weapon Skill gives +3.0% Chance to Hit, +8 Weapon Skill gives +3.3% Chance to Hit.

Scrap that. Or keep it, but remember to scrap it before 2.3 comes live.
According to patch 2.3 on the PTR:

WoW -> Test Realm Patch Notes

# Expertise: We have added a new stat and associated rating called expertise and expertise rating. Expertise rating converts to expertise at the same rate that weapon skill rating formerly converted at. Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried by 0.25%.
[...]
Weapon Skill: All items and abilities that granted weapon skill have been changed. In most cases, they were converted to expertise or expertise rating. Ranged attacks do not benefit from expertise, so ranged weapon skill has generally been replaced by critical strike bonuses or hit bonuses. In a few cases, talents have been changed toother effects to avoid granting players excessive amounts of expertise.
[...]
* Dwarf: Gun Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with Guns by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill.
* Troll: Bow and Thrown Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with those weapons by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill.

Needhamizer · 10/11/07, 6:53 PM

the .5 second cast on the auto shot can get clipped and consequently reset by other special shots and I believe kill command as well. Does the most common steady shot kill command macro prevent that from happening? If so any explanation on how to avoid that could help.

Loshiis · 10/11/07, 10:14 PM

As a MM Hunter using a 1:1.5 shot rotation, the best way I found to work in Kill Command was right after Steady and before the special in the rotation. Unfortunately, although Kill Command is instant, it cannot be used along with arcane or multishot in one button click...you have to click twice. As a result, autoshot can be delayed a little. That, along with a mana/damage ratio that isn't exactly great, prompted me to forget about adding in Kill Command to my shot rotation as MM.

I know, heresy, sue me. :p

Howitzer · 10/12/07, 1:17 AM

I really just wish we could have our own forum according to class here on EJ. It would be much better than the idea of having to create different threads for each class consolidating information. Having said that, myself, Lactose, and Cheeky will be working together to give us all the ultimate Hunter thread everyone's been asking for. Hopefully we'll get it done soon.

• Glaurong · 10/12/07, 1:43 AM

It would be nice from an organizational standpoint but then you would miss valuable crosstalk. You wouldn't get other smart players of other classes "checking our work" as it were. We probably wouldn't throw our feedback in other class threads either.

KayossZero · 10/12/07, 2:52 AM

Originally Posted by Loshiis

As a MM Hunter using a 1:1.5 shot rotation, the best way I found to work in Kill Command was right after Steady and before the special in the rotation. Unfortunately, although Kill Command is instant, it cannot be used along with arcane or multishot in one button click...you have to click twice. As a result, autoshot can be delayed a little. That, along with a mana/damage ratio that isn't exactly great, prompted me to forget about adding in Kill Command to my shot rotation as MM.

I know, heresy, sue me. :p

Actually you can use KC with Multi/Arcane/Steady at the same time if you use macros such as these:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/stopcasting 
/castrandom [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command 
/stopcasting
/equip Rough Arrow
/cast Steady Shot
/equip Warden's Arrow
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Lightning Breath
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This will cast KC and SS or any instant shot in one key press, the only downside is if you hit it too early you will stop Auto Shot before it fires, aside from that its golden expecially as BM specc if your timing is spot on.

PSGarak · 10/12/07, 3:05 AM

With the changes in 2.3, you can remove all the /stopcasting lines as well.

Needhamizer · 10/12/07, 6:57 PM

Don't forget a great explanation of trinkets!! We've all got so many and they vary quite a bit in situational/spec usefulness.

Loshiis · 10/12/07, 11:58 PM

Originally Posted by KayossZero

Actually you can use KC with Multi/Arcane/Steady at the same time if you use macros such as these:

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/stopcasting 
/castrandom [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command 
/stopcasting
/equip Rough Arrow
/cast Steady Shot
/equip Warden's Arrow
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Lightning Breath
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This will cast KC and SS or any instant shot in one key press, the only downside is if you hit it too early you will stop Auto Shot before it fires, aside from that its golden expecially as BM specc if your timing is spot on.

What effect exactly does equipping a different set of arrows have on the instant cast status of Kill Command? I'll be going to test this, and I don't doubt your word that it works, but I'm interested as to *why* it works. Switching sets of arrows would seem to me to make getting both Kill Command and a special off at the same time impossible rather than possible. :p

Edit: Nevermind, tested it with and without arrow command, same deal. It would appear the only reason earlier macros did not work for me was the initial /stopcasting.

Gorah · 10/13/07, 11:02 AM

Originally Posted by Loshiis

What effect exactly does equipping a different set of arrows have on the instant cast status of Kill Command? I'll be going to test this, and I don't doubt your word that it works, but I'm interested as to *why* it works. Switching sets of arrows would seem to me to make getting both Kill Command and a special off at the same time impossible rather than possible. :p

Edit: Nevermind, tested it with and without arrow command, same deal. It would appear the only reason earlier macros did not work for me was the initial /stopcasting.

Arrow swapping for SS is meant to decrease cost of arrows restocking, as Steady Shot does not benefit from arrow dps if I remember well. But its bit pushing it a bit imo, I was never bothered with carrying 2 different sets of arrows, to make SS cheaper in gold.

Tyrae · 10/13/07, 12:07 PM

Hey guys, great idea for a thread. Howitzer and myself have talked via PMs in the past, if you guy want an extra hand putting this thread together let me knowvia PM.

Heathun · 10/13/07, 1:43 PM

First of all I would like to thank the people that have put ElitistJerks.com together, really great website here.
I was a bit overwhelmed reading all the changes in 2.3 to troll hunters, as I am comfortable and content with my current shot rotation and overall stats. Reading this thread has shown me though that as long as I am at or near the hit cap (which I am), I really should'nt notice much of a change in dps when 2.3 is released, from the weapon skill bonus change to Crit %, if anything I should gain some dps from the 1% critical strike chance.
Also, in wanting to be as prepared as possible for the next wave of changes, I have a few questions about some of the other things in 2.3. Has anyone heard weather or not arcane shot is going to get a new cooldown because of its new ability? And could serpent sting scaling with Ranged Attack Power make me want to include that as one of the more important shots in my rotation, instead of being the worst Damage per mana shot that I have?

Edit: Will expertise have any effect on my pet's percentage of a melee attack being dodged, parried, or blocked?

Lumi · 10/13/07, 2:01 PM

Arcane Shot cooldown remains the same. 6 seconds untalented, 5 seconds talented.

Serpent Sting is still expensive, but the formula for its damage is 660 + .1 * RAP. Compare that against steady shot and if it comes up as more, than its worth it. Also its not a bad idea on movement fights depending on the composition of your raid (hella warlocks = no room for dots).

Edit: I'm not sure, but misery might increase serpent sting damage by 5%. The damage goes through armor but is resistible.