[Cataclysm] - Survival Hunter - Page 3

Excalin · 12/14/10, 3:57 PM

Originally Posted by proxx

As for pet talents, are people still noticing boss fights where the boss is being moved around enough that the pet isnt getting to attack all the time? If this is the case, Boars speed is going to wind up being a clear winner, letting it keep up with the boss and maximise uptime.

I have found myself quite Annoyed with trying to use Kill Command. Both with the distance between hunter and pet and the distance between pet and mob.

Rivkah · 12/14/10, 4:01 PM

Originally Posted by Darklumiya

Didn't even notice it was you posting Neruse, long time no see! However, i'm not quite sure what's causing the differences, but I did notice that swapping from a ferocity to cunning pet drastically increased the stat weight of haste. Not sure if this is bugged, or i'm missing something here. Just double checked again, and now i'm getting a 48.7 dps loss switching from ferocity to cunning.

Ferocity vs cunning involves several factors that are probably related to the value swings people are seeing.
- Ferocity pet damage will go up as AP increases due to Call of the Wild (and the effect of Rabid further multiplying it)
- Cunning pet damage will vary significantly depending on your feeding frenzy settings
- Cunning pet damage may go up or down depending on how Roar of Recovery affects your shot breakdown. Shot simulations on the site are currently extremely sensitive to fluctuations in focus availability and occasionally your damage can even go down with extra focus due to the shift producing a less optimal end shot breakdown. I hope to improve on this over time but it'd difficult to compensate for
- Different crit values will have a significant impact on wild hunt uptime. Depending on where those crits get simulated they can also create small blips in damage due to how they affect if Sic'Em procs (Go for the Throat is averaged over the fight so it doesn't have this problem). This is probably a big factor in why crit values are bouncing around more than they should on the site. Adding in Owl's Focus complicates matters further as it can proc at the same time as Sic'Em or different times. At the moment the code assumes that if you use a pet basic attack it consumes both buffs if available. I'm not sure if this is actually how the behavior works though, so confirmation would be good. Since generally cunning pets run with 2 pts in wild hunt and ferocity 1 pt (due to the inability to sustain 2), the wild hunt uptime differences generated by crit can be significant

Also in respect to the arcane shot debate, currently the site doesn't simulate the bug where windfury and similar effects are actually reducing focus regen rather than increasing it. This means that you're actually getting less focus regen than is being simulated in game right now, which probably has a direct result on total arcane shots fired since almost all spare focus goes into arcane shots. I was hoping this would get fixed soon so I hadn't implemented the bug, but if it's not addressed in a few days I'm going to add some code to enable it so we can get more accurate simulations.

According to my math, if your simulated focus regen is about 5.11/sec, your actual regen should be about 4.22/sec in game right now until they fix the bug. In a 4 minute fight this amounts to a loss of 213.6 focus which is pretty considerable.

Darklumiya · 12/14/10, 4:07 PM

Originally Posted by Neruse

FD doesn't support the proposition that dropping Arcane during 100-80% is a dps gain. Cobra IS higher damage-per-cast above 80%, but without heroism it isn't higher damage-per-second.

Wouldn't higher damage-per-cast translate over to more dps? Because your most likely going to be under haste effect at the start of the fight from rapid fire/berkserking/heroism, meaing CS's cast will be minimal. It only seems logical that dropping arcane would be the way to go.

-Dark

aijlad · 12/14/10, 4:29 PM

Originally Posted by proxx

For this kind of situation though, I'm staying away from haste-procs. For now, they just seem to create too many situations where you're either capping focus, and having to dump it on inefficient things like KC, rather than happening to proc just when you need them most. I would rather a proc that I always get the most out of (preferrably Agi proc, though will live with a mastery/crit proc in the interim).

That's what I'm thinking. I believe just getting static haste that gets your Cobra Shot to under 1.66 seconds cast time (not counting latency here) and then finding trinkets that proc agility or crit or even mastery would make it much easier to control the focus gains and deal with Lock and Load procs. It seems in a situation like I just described that Haste proc trinkets would end up not being used to their full potential.

Nidal · 12/14/10, 6:12 PM

Originally Posted by Darklumiya

Also, I find even without using Arcane shot for the first twenty percent of the fight due to Careful Aim, you should still be outputting around 10 AS in an approximately 5 minute fight. This would appear to give AS Glyph the edge over SS Glyph.

-Dark

I've been torn between the AS and SS glyph as well, but I've decided on SS. Although the difference between the two seems almost negligible on single target in Zeherah's, you have to consider any fight with adds or time where SS will be ticking while the boss isn't being attacked directly. For example with the ratio of SS ticks to AS in a fight like Magmaw SS becomes a clear winner. Even in the worst case scenario, a flawless single target fight, it will only be ~40dps worse if the simulation is correct..

Neruse · 12/14/10, 6:55 PM

Originally Posted by Darklumiya

Wouldn't higher damage-per-cast translate over to more dps? Because your most likely going to be under haste effect at the start of the fight from rapid fire/berkserking/heroism, meaing CS's cast will be minimal. It only seems logical that dropping arcane would be the way to go.

-Dark

Well, yes. If it is >80% and one has hero, then drop Arcane.

Namarus · 12/14/10, 7:46 PM

Right now with the low haste provided by current gear I think it is better to stick with Serpent. Checking on FD I have around a 50 dps boost using arcane over serpent. However, serpent in my opinion is a little better because of how it helps with serpent spread via multi-shot.

On multi target fights, that 50 dps from arcane will in no way beat out the dps gain to serpent.

Relying on LNL for arcane shots to make the arcane glyph worth it, seems to be unreliable. With RNG you can have good or bad numbers of LNL procs. I would rather have a damage boost that will always be available.

However, as gear gets better, and crit rates increase I can easily see that arcane will make much more of a difference.

Esoth · 12/14/10, 8:06 PM

Originally Posted by Tphirey

For SV it's not just haste that affects this but our crit too. I've noticed during rapidfire if I get a string of crits (which then partially refund the focus cost) I easily focus cap and have to sometimes use a string of arcane shots to keep from becoming focus capped. This seems to happen more during rapidfire, berserking or bloodlust where the combinations of crit proc from a trinket + haste buff leads to focus capping.

If you're talking about Thrill of the Hunt, there doesn't seem to be a crit factor to it anymore, just a 15% chance on all of those particular shots. Haste will actually be what increases the value of this talent, when it increases the frequency of Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, and Arcane Shot. Either way, I agree that TotH causes some unexpected focus gains that warrant arcane shot dumping or could lead to focus capping. Especially in conjunction with Lock and Load, where you are not only spending no focus, but are potentially gaining TotH procs on top of your regular passive focus regeneration.

Unrelated question: Has anyone tested if our mastery affects non-hunter procs and abilities? For instance, the goblin rocket racial, [Darkmoon Card: Hurricane], etc.

Cinderglow · 12/14/10, 9:32 PM

Am I correct in understanding the way you presented stat vaules in that Hit > Agi > Crit > haste > mastery? I was under the impression that Mastery was our best (aside from agility) stat.

proxx · 12/14/10, 9:48 PM

Originally Posted by Cinderglow

Am I correct in understanding the way you presented stat vaules in that Hit > Agi > Crit > haste > mastery? I was under the impression that Mastery was our best (aside from agility) stat.

It appears to be much more complicated than that, or at least, at these gear levels it is. You don't need to prioritise hit over agi, as it is easy to get hit capped in places that don't compete with agi, so instead you're left comparing crit, haste, and mastery. How valuable each is seems to change in relation to the total amount of the other attributes.
As such, you have people out there stacking mastery + haste, people out there stacking Mastery + Crit, and people stacking Crit + haste coming out to very similar numbers. That doesnt mean you can just put the points out willy nilly and achieve good results though.

As the gear levels rise, things will hopefully become a bit clearer.

26thraider · 12/14/10, 9:49 PM

Back to the High LnL rotation.

I have tried out going for ExS-SerpS-ExS-AS-ExS. I haven't actually tried out Kill Command, but if what Luckyshot said is right, that KC is worth about half of AS, then the instant portion of Serpent Sting might just edge it out. This is due to two things, lower focus cost (we are mainly trying to dump some focus, not a great deal) and the Mastery scaling (this portion might of course not kick in yet).
Besides, do we even know if KC is affected by Noxious Stings? It says 'your damage', so I'm guessing no.

Basically KC might be more DPS, but much less DPF (KC needs to do 60% more damage than the instant portion of the sting for be equal DPF). Naturally since it is a situation of dumping focus, the DPF could be very moot. However, the base regen is pretty low, and the actual regeneration should be pretty low for the duration (4 seconds), so a higher DPF ability should be better as it would allow for more Arcanes later.

The actual inclusion of Arcane Shot in LnL appears to be a relic of the time when ExS was talented. Low level Hunters needed to have a use for LnL. Now that requirement is gone, so it begs the question, why is Arcane still included? For complexity would be the optimistic answer.

Tragos · 12/14/10, 9:49 PM

Originally Posted by Cinderglow

Am I correct in understanding the way you presented stat vaules in that Hit > Agi > Crit > haste > mastery? I was under the impression that Mastery was our best (aside from agility) stat.

As far as I can tell, 1 agility is stronger than 1 hit rating. Either way, with reforging now, the best way to get more hit is through reforging, not through gemming so you'll rarely have to choose between them.

footloop · 12/14/10, 10:11 PM

Crit is better than mastery because it has the same damage boost for our elemental damage but also applies to autoshot/killshot, in addition to proc'ing some stuff. Technically if you were doing 100% elemental damage then keeping your crit% and your % boost from mastery dead even would give max dps, but again since crit also affects autoshot you're better off with crit until you have something like 3 or 4 times as much.

Varia · 12/15/10, 12:11 AM

I think that dealing with l&l proccs is situational since your amount of focus when the procc occurs is completely random.

I found myself 3 ways to handle a l&l procc (putting it simple):

1. low focus : ExS -> CS -> ExS -> CS -> Exs
2. medium focus : ExS -> CS -> ExS -> AS -> ExS
3. high focus : ExS -> KC -> ExS -> CS -> ExS

This only applies when BA is on cooldown of course.

I personally think, that KC is a good focus dump in situations with dangeriously high focus, because when youre attempting to min-max too much with AS or SS, a TotH-procc can pretty much mess you up.

Handa · 12/15/10, 1:15 AM

Originally Posted by Tphirey

For SV it's not just haste that affects this but our crit too. I've noticed during rapidfire if I get a string of crits (which then partially refund the focus cost) I easily focus cap and have to sometimes use a string of arcane shots to keep from becoming focus capped. This seems to happen more during rapidfire, berserking or bloodlust where the combinations of crit proc from a trinket + haste buff leads to focus capping.

Yeah, a lot of focus during haste effects and in boss fights I guess that might lead to over 10 arcane shots, will have to keep checking as I go along since we just started raiding yesterday.