Hello

this is my first hunter, usually casters is what i play.

lv 68
SPEC BM
aussie playing us = 350-400 ping

im looking for shot rotation macros, that will be usefull in hero 5 mans, kara and pvp (if they apply)

Ive spent days reading all the hunter threads and havent got through what i figure to be 1% of all teh info,

what i have been using:

and today ive tried these out


I honestly dont know what im looking for in terms of all teh math and jazz with the timers and such, obviously it seems cause of auto shoot you cant just manually weave at my latency. and smashing 1 button seems to help alot. so if i can get any feed back on macros and perhaps what might be best for me untill i get end game gear and such, that would be great thanks.

I used to be a MM hunter, but i've switched over to BM and am constantly trying out different macros. I know I could probably squeeze out an extra 5-10 DPS by doing my rotation manually, but one of the main reasons why I switched (the other being my nasty 200ms+ latency) was that I found I wasn't watching the fights nearly enough, and just not enjoying the experience.

My time was basically spent watching timer bars.

To me, the loss of a bit of DPS was more than acceptable for my pure enjoyment of the game, and after all, isn't that the most important thing?

Hey guys I need some help to better my dps, I have a 2.10 Attack speed. If there is a macro that does 1/1 dammage macro for Steady Shot/ Auto Shot out there or if there are any other good macros out there , I am in a BT/Sunwell raiding guild and I need to max dps to keep staying in raids. Thank you for your time .

Um, regardless of whether spamming a macro takes the meaning out of your life or not, the supposedly superior rotation described in the first post is not.

If you've been farming Illidan since September, your Arcane Shot is almost certainly not hitting harder than your steadyshots. Replacing a steady with an arcane in the situation you describe it not gaining any DPS unless the fight is ending in the <1.5s that a steady shot would take to fire - you're just burning more mana replacing a cheap high damage shot with an expensive low damage one.

This rotation (which btw is different from the one you outlined in step 3) is also generally inferior to the usual 3:2 most hunters in T6 do. It is superior to a 1:1 steady/auto rotation yes, but a /cast/cast macro doesn't generate a 1:1 rotation, it generates 1:1 when hasted and 3:2 when unhasted. Both states are more mana efficient than continuous 1:1.5 with arcane+multi, and yeild higher DPS on Cheeky's for most hunters.

By all means you should manually weave when it's correct to do so (usually highly hasted), but the method you described above is only really appropriate for MM hunters and low-haste survival hunters (and in raid situations with good gear, debatably not even MM hunters).

This pretty much sums things up, right here.

SS is more often than not, the best shot to use. That's why you ignore AS, that's why you ignore MS.

It is analogous to how slam warriors are played (which was vastly reported wrong earlier). Slam warriors want to hit slam immediately after a swing, just as we want to hit our SS immediately after. The difference is, a warrior's swing is reset when they do that, while ours isnt. However, SS can push back the autoshot, so our steady has to be done and on its way that 0.5s before its actually shot off, or it gets pushed back, denting DPS. And this isn't even accounting for having to hit KS every time its up, someone mentioned people hovering their mouse over the KS button. That's all fine and dandy until you have to use the mouse to turn, move, select a new target, etc.

Call it bastardization of a class, call it a crutch, but the fact is, a macro will always win due to its infallible nature. This is more of Blizzard's fault in not making autoshot like a regular autoattack. If that changes, weaving will come into style and be pretty awesome (if a bit mana inefficient), but until then, you have to chose which shot you're throwing out between autos, and steady wins, while at the same time, a macro assists in the details.

Manual weaving doesn't get rid of 0.5 sec autoshot cast time, 3:2 macro does. That's why it does more dps than manual weaving, end of story.

I tried several macros and I did not find that my DPS improved all that much. What I did find helped me a lot was using a 4 button mouse, and binding steadshot to one of the buttons. I can then have my mouse pointer over another shot key, and quickly press it.

In a usual Slam rotation you get an extra attack with added damage in exchange for 15 rage and a delayed autohit (by 0.5 seconds + time between last autohit and Slam). You want to use Slam as soon as possible just after every autohit.
I don't know of any Macro that can make a Slam Warrior rotation work by just spamming it as I think there's no way of getting an autohit into a castsequence macro as you can do it with auto shots.

More on topic:
Due to its much better scaling (20% instead 15% from AP and base weapon damage added) Steady Shot should be more DPS for decently geared Hunters than Arcane Shot is unless your target has some enormous amount of armor.

There are two interpretations of this. Your interpretation is that Steady won't clip autoshot anymore. The other interpretation is that an using an instant ability will no longer lockout autoshot, which basically is Blizz's way of saying the we won't get the UI lockup anymore.

Ayone have any ideas on what this means?

Steady Shot will no longer clip Auto Shot in Wrath of the Lich King.
Using an instant ability after Steady Shot will no longer lock out Auto Shot in the next patch.

Thanks for the clarification. I hadn't seen the WotLK notes yet. I presume this is from Alpha testing?

I'd have to agree with Howitzer originally on his personal opinion that people shouldn't have to use macro's, but it is personal choice that lets them, no one is going to dictate it and say they can't despite what some of the worlds "elite" hunter force may say (heh).

People are inevitably going to just want big numbers on recount and WWS and do anything to get it, and by all means they go to EJ and hunter guides they find on the net. Steady shot should have been trainable at a lower level tbh.

Would love to add the fact I hated macro's, coming from an oldschool MM hunter who stuck to it even through farming BT for god knows how many months, and that weaving was the best thing you could do simply because of human adaptability and capability to calculate and understand rotation with haste procs ticking off. Macro's could never take that away from you :P

Ahh well, who wants to be a fury warrior in WotLK? Spamspamspamspam.

If you don't ever use multi shot - even as a bm hunter - then you are indeed gimping your own damage output. However, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from using a your usual macro and weaving in those multi shots when appropriate. The same is true of Arcane Shot.

The bottom line is there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a macro-mashing hunter as long as you take the advantages afforded to you by the complete lack of care that is required to keep your standard rotation up to be able to do the little things: Things like dropping a trap in front of a healer to buy them time in the event the worst happens, or in my case sticking a wyvern sting out on a target that breaks loose from some bad crowd control and being able to throw out a raid warning to alert a tank that they have only a few seconds to pickup the mob before it rampages it's way through the raid. Purism is in my opinion purile; of course manual shot weaving will perform better - just as a car with a manual gearbox will outperform an autobox - but the reality is that the Autobox is easier to drive and affords you many other fringe benefits, like being able to keep both hands on the wheel at all times.

Having a castsequence macro is simply replacing the manual gearbox on your hunter with an autobox. It will mildly diminish performance in ideal circumstances, but reduces the margin of error considerably and grants you the ability to be more aware of your environment. If you've ever said "whoops" during a raid, it's probably for the best that you use a macro.

Stick with the first shot rotation and manually add multi shot Arcane shot as you see fit. Multi shot in a macro for heroics is asking to be kicked, as you'll consistently break crowd control. Arcane Shot won't give you a significant increase in DPS, and it's for this reason that you can safely ignore it as a BM hunter.

Any specific questions from this thread can be directed to the [Hunter] Help me! thread while a Theorycrafting Think Tank article is being constructed.