Rosshi

Can you give me a good shot rotation? Or show me where to find one?

 

• Slash

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13107-h...n_illustrated/ is a good place to start.

But basically as a standard 41/20/0 BM-specced hunter the shot rotation you are likely to be using will consist of Auto-Steady-Auto-Steady... etc. with Kill Commands slotted into your rotation between shots. You want to fit a Steady Shot in between each of your auto shots, ideally without delaying(or clipping) the next auto-shot.

There is a button-mash macro which will perform this rotation for you(which you should find with minimal searching of this thread). Some people like the macro, others think that they do more dps timing their shots manually. I think its down to personal preference, personally I like to use the macro as it lets me focus more attention on other elements of the fight.

 

Berkut

I would like to get a discussion about haste, armor penetration, hit rating, gear itemization, and post SSC raiding going.

If this has been done already, and someone can point me to it, it would be greatly appreciated.

Anyway...

Looking over the gear available in the T6 Raids, namely Hyjal and BT, it seems like there are two new stats that are used a lot, armor penetration and haste. However, it also seems that comparing T6 level gear to T5 level gear, in many cases these stats are replacing +hit.

As someone who has had near the hit cap for a long time, I am interested in this change, and what it means as far as gear choices are concerned.

Another issue, that is really impacted (I think) by all this +haste gear, is weapon speeds. Since Blizzard has pretty much broken the hunter shot mechanics, and apparently does not have Clue #1 on how to fix it, we are stuck with a reality that the weapon progression post-Kara is largely broken. Serpent Spine Longbow is NOT an improvement over the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle, and in fact weapon speed >>>> all other stats when it comes to true DPS. One of the ways I would hope you could make this up is via +haste. A higher damage, slower speed bow could, presumably, have a greater capacity to take +haste to get the speed down, and let their higher damage "kick in". Is that the case, or is there something I am missing there? What is the optimal speed for a bow once everything is factored in?

The real question of course, is how do you rate things like +haste and armor penetration? It is easy to say that they are good, but harder to say how good. Is it worth losing capped +hit for +haste? That seems to be the choice that might have to be made, at least until I can pick up a [Halberd of Desolation]. But even with the target level set to 73, Cheeky says that in most cases losing +hit for +haste is a net gain. That strikes me as surprising, since actually missing is a huge DPS knock.

 

Trohck

You can check out the relative values of hit vs. haste vs. armor penetration on the spreadsheet using "CalcAttributes". Anyway, missing is not any more damage loss than not critting. Yes it has a significant impact, but it probably feels worse than it really is.

Re: hit rating in T6. I was worried about this too when I first entered T6 content. But it's really not a signifcant problem. While the T6 set pieces have significantly less +hit than the T6 set pieces, many T6 off-slots do have +hit. It is still quite straightforward to be hit-capped in T6 gear.
Neck: [Choker of Endless Nightmares]
Cloak: [Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape]
Bracers: [Insidious Bands]
Waist: [Boneweave Girdle]
Boots: [Quickstrider Moccasins]
Ring: [Stormrage Signet Ring]
Ring: [Ring of Deceitful Intent]
Trinket: [Madness of the Betrayer]
2H Weapon: [Halberd of Desolation]
1H Weapons: [Tracker's Blade], [Blade of Savagery]

If you wear and socket these (using the halberd as a weapon), you have 186 hit rating, way over the cap. Additionally, T6 gear has 3 yellow sockets which can be socketed with [Glinting Pyrestone]s or [Rigid Lionseye]s for an additional 15-30 hit rating.

 

Sienna

It depends on how much hit you lose to how much haste you gain. 15.7 hit rating is 1% hit so unless you are capped 15.7 hit rating gives you 1% more dps, but not to your total dps since hit rating doesn't effect pet dps in any direct or indirect way. Crit rating on the other hand works similarly. 17 crit rating gives 1% more dps to you if you have 5/5 mortal shots. Now 17 is more than 15.7 but crit rating increases your pets dps as well, more kill commands and more focus regen. So you gotta do some math to see which is better in the end.

Haste rating, 15.7 gives 1% more haste and that also gives dps to your pet because 1% more haste means 1% more crits in the same amount of time, so indirectly it gives more KC and focus regen. Now it all comes down to how much haste you gain vs how much hit/crit you lose. Moreover haste also means more quickshots procs, more trinket procs etc, which gives it a slight upper hand.

Finally, armor penetration, like hit, doesn't benefit your pet at all. And since armor mitigation is not a linear scale it's impossible to calculate the gain from penetration. It changes on each boss and with each debuff used on the boss such as Faire Fire or Curse of Recklessness. But since penetration gives more and more dps when the armor on the mob goes lower and lower, if you want to go for penetration it's a good idea to stack it.

 

Sympa

I suppose that the question becomes at what point does it become more beneficial dps wise to go marks instead of bm. Reason being that armer pen doesn't affect pets, or will it ever. Keep in mind that is setting aside the raid synergy gained from bm.

My blog, about wow and the like.

 

Sienna

Marksman will be more beneficial when there are faster end game bows. Currently, regardless of gear, BM is the best way to go for dps.

 

Thorongil

But that´s why they brought Haste into the game. Just customize your weapon-speed through Haste-Items. Anyways, I do not really see, why Haste-Rating should make Marks so much more viable that it will out-dps BM. Sure, in some pet-unfriendly-encounters Marks will always be better, but not generally and I do not really suppose this will change until WotLK. It should not in my opinion, given the fact that MM is generally the best arena-specc at the time being.

 

Gurth

As far as i know armor penetration do affect pet dps.

 

• Slash

Armor penetration is a self-buff, not a boss-debuff(like sunder armor). So unless you pet inherits a portion of your armor penetration(which as far as i know it does not), your pet will not gain any dps from your armor penetration items.

 

Thelegend

Rather unsure as to whether this is best placed here or in the Spreadsheet development page, but it is loosely related to the current flow of this thread so i'll post it here and move it if necessary.

My question / observation is with regard to Cheeky's spreadsheet (fantastic work mate, a true planning resource for end-game) and weapon speed. I am fortunate enough to be in a guild with everything on farm at the moment, so my attentions have recently turned to optimising DPS and gear. I have a plan for the upgrades, comparative DPS weightings (again thanks to Cheeky) for priority, etc, BUT the one overriding (and very much annoying) fact is that my [Barrel-Blade Longrifle] in terms of spreadsheet DPS is noticably superior to my [Bristleblitz Striker] until I manage to obtain a [Dragonspine Trophy].

With the aforementioned desire to otimise DPS, I figured it could not hurt to test this theory so I socketted some Rubies, added a Crit scope, made the Ammo Pouch, bought the Timeless Shells and took my new toy to Black Temple.

Results: Wow Web Stats

Now, I don't consider myself to be one of the best Hunters, but I'm certainly not a bad Hunter (though my Guild may disagree after some botched Misdirects on Illidan!) and by my standards the DPS figures from that night in Black Temple were embarassing whilst using a weapon that *should* have been an overall (albeit minor) DPS increase in my current setup.

The over-riding question in my mind is, why?

To give perspective and comparion here is last nights Hyjal / BT Raid WWS: Wow Web Stats
As you can see, with a little situational luck on Rage Winterchill i'm happily hitting 1700 DPS (about optimal in my gear I believe) and averaging a reasonable amount on other bosses. But the earlier run with the Gun by comparison was disasterous.

So the point: can anybody; or would anyone care to try to, explain why there is such a staggering difference in posted figures. I don't think I was playing any differently when using the gun, the faster shot speed certainly made it feel like my DPS should have been higher, but inreality it was sub-par.

I understand the logistics behind why the Gun is better given my personal Haste ratings, etc, (simply put - the Bow has a far greater DPS potential - it simply isn't using it, whereas the Gun is performing almost to its full potential based on the Spreadsheet figures) however, the simple fact is that it is not translating from spreadsheet to game and I would like to try and figure out why, whether it be my playstyle or simple the lack of variables that are physically modellable in a spreadsheet.

 

Trohck

There are a few reasons the spreadsheet "overvalues" haste rating / weapon speed. The spreadsheet assumes you are doing an infinitely long DPS rotation on a single target. Your individual shots are not going to do as much damage, you will just have a much tighter rotation due to the weapon speed. This leads to a few things:

1. Whenever you have any kind of mobility in a fight, you will do less damage with the tight-rotation weapon, because you are limited by Arcane Shot cooldown more than anything. Additionally, for a looser rotation, you may break your rotation during a "dead time" where you're doing comparitively less DPS. With a tight cycle there's no such "dead time".
2. Spreadsheet doesn't take into account multishot on trash or on bosses. When you're hitting multiple targets with Multishot, a slow weapon is substantially better.
3. Mistakes you make in the tight rotation will be far more glaring, and cost you more DPS.

 

Sienna

After the haste nerf I don't think you can get a 3.0 speed bow down to 2.0ish even if you use every haste item in the game. But yeah I agree that I don't see MM getting over BM in terms of dps until expansion, not unless they do some changes in the future patches. I don't care either though since I like playing BM more.

 

Sienna

To Thelegend: May I ask what the spreadsheet says about those 2 ranged weapons? Their dps is considerably different or one the rifle is like 4-5 dps higher than the Arch bow? Because if they are really close then you can't just look at one night of WWS stats and say the spreadsheet is wrong. Minor differences between weapons will never show in real fights. You crit 2 times more with the other one and suddenly you do more dps. Unless you tested those 2 weapons in the game, in the same fight, many many times and the average of Arch bow is considerably higher than average of rifle, then you can say, spreadsheet doesn't match the in-game performance.

 

Cheeky

You also have to account in variances in group composition, target debuffs, etc.

Take both out to Dr. Boom and squeeze off a few thousand shots. (And remember to time them the same, not just a mana bar, because slower weapons are much more mana efficient.)

Cheeky of Havoc

 

Sienna

Btw did anyone notice that the new client-server latency system improved BM dps considerably. Yesterday I went to blasted lands to test it and the most dps I saw before the scorpid nerf was around 1500 with scorpid doing 480 dps himself, and I found myself doing 1670 dps out of a sudden against the same mob. I tested around 6 times and all the time the dps over 2 minutes was 1670ish changing from 1650 to 1675. I have 115 passive haste + DST over Serpent Swiftness. DST + Quickshots take auto speed to 1.46 so it's still on auto/steady range so I never need to switch to auto-auto-steady. And the dps is just plain awesome. And now I use windserpent, who does less than 480 dps ofc. If I still had the old scorpid dps the total would be more than 1700. That's like 200 dps upgrade just from changing latency impact. Probably no other class did benefit from this change as we did.

 

Thelegend

I have based my personal preferences in the spreadsheet on a Raid buffed basis with LoTP added based on our usual group make-up in Infamous, purely as that is the main time I am using said weapons. I don't think for a second the spreadsheet is wrong, simply trying to figure out if I am possibly using the wrong rotation, etc.

In raw DPS terms, with my gear as is the difference is:
[Barrel-Blade Longrifle] - Hunter DPS - 1308.36
[Bristleblitz Striker] - Hutner DPS - 1278.82

Not a huge difference, given the DPS variance I found on my first test. But when you consider the average piece for piece gear upgrade is 6-7 DPS (DST and 4-piece T6 aside), a 30 DPS difference is quite substantial.

In a normal Raiding situation I don't have mana issues, if I don't get a Shadow Priest (unusual) then I have enough consumable based regen to maintain a Steady > Auto rotation for a good 5-10 minutes irrespective of weapon. (Though on both test occasions I believe I had a Shadow Priest). Switching to Viper isn't ideal, but should, by my logic give weight to the BBLR as the haste proc is more beneficial to the BBS for the reasons I assumed in my original post.

I do intend to go for a Dr Boom test at some point soon, but i'm somewhat restricted at the moment because of work! Thought it might be a nice debate topic for a while though!

 

Rokh

Yeah, weapon speed is something I've wrestled with long and hard and debated quite a lot in my own thinking and testing. Given my latency usually is between 125ms-150ms, I think in a real-world raid situation where you'll be using Arcane Shot and Multi-shot (things the spreadsheet doesn't take into account using a steady:auto rotation), slower weapons with higher DPS will win out most of the time. Wolfslayer vs. Sunfury is the endless debate, especially since I still haven't seen Vashj's bow drop, but I keep going back to Sunfury. The WWS dps of each weapon is nearly identical, with a slight convenience going to Sunfury because of mana efficiency. I don't know, for me at least they seem to prove out even.

Of course all this is moot tomorrow; 1850 personal rating, here I come!

 

Jhagadurn

Hey guys, I've looked all over the forum, done a broad search, and a specific search in hunter threads. I couldn't find what I need to know about hit rating, so I figured I'd ask.
Basically, if I spec 3/3 surefooted, I only need 94 hit rating right? To have maximum hit?
Just trying to figure out how much hit rating I can skimp in favor of agility or crit.

 

Beovylf

Bingo... 94 or 95

 

Indora

@Thelegend

I think the problem you have is just ignoring you reaction-time
Even with a makro you can´t do 100 shot-trys per second...
With my mousewheel I hit around 10 times per second, so my reactiontime should be 1-100ms. You have to add this number to the latency-field.

And:
The spreadsheet doesn't calculate the time you dealays your autoshot with KC.
With Doomwalker's gun this are another 0.2-0.3 second autoshot delay every 3-4 autoshots!

 

Sienna

Use Logitech G9 or MX/VX Revolution and bind the macro to the wheel. It sends out like 100 commands per second, I'm not kidding. So with the new latency system if you roll the wheel nonstop you'll be almost playing with 0 latency, even if you have 200ms regular.

 

Muarf

6% = 6 * 15.769.. = 94.615 hit rating

With 94 hit rating you might still have some miss I think

 

Icefall_ShC

Can somebody show me the math why Frenzy only needs 4 points, when you have Cobra Reflexes?

In Cheeky's spreadsheet it still helps to have 5 points. So just checking.

 

Gearknight

The 5th point is still beneficial, but not as beneficial as a 2nd point in Animal Handler, for your pet's hit rating. That's why you see a lot of people with 4/5 Frenzy.