The discussion of haste and BM spec came up in the hunter channel last night when i stated that my next upgrade i want is Dragonspine tricket. The other hunters say the haste would be wasted on a BM spec which after reading these forums i believe it will still be an upgrade. After doing a search of the forums on haste and reading tons of post i;m still stumped on were or not it is an true upgrade. I have entered it into Cheeky's spreadsheet with my gear and my dps actually goes down which i believe i read is incorrect in the spreadsheet. My guild has just downed Void reaver and are startign to focus on SSC, My profile is filed out so the question is: I'm i correct in thinking this is an upgrade for me?

Cheeky's spreadsheet doesn't model the haste proc for Dragonspine, as far as I know, which would explain the apparent loss of dps.

Howitzer is correct; as long as you can cope with variable haste and not drop shots or clip (user error!) and stay above the GCD threshold, all forms of haste will increase your dps (including DST).

TIC is correct, all just get is the +AP benefit right now.

I'm working on adding a page just to handle this trinket. It's a real pain in the ass, but I'm going to provide timing/DPS information for 4 sets of haste:
1 - nothing
2 - Just Quick Shots
3 - Just Dragonspine Trophy
4 - Both Quick Shots and Dragonspine Trophy

Once I can get reliable information on the ppm rate for it I should be able to make some rough approximations of uptime for each of those states.

i figured he was using a macro like:

/castsequence Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command

or with castrandom.

but either way wouldnt it use kill command before your next auto if it was available? even if the kill command part was above the castsequence?

The constorium blaster will show as more dps than the vashj bow as well in a BM build theorycrafted by a large amount. I could be wrong but it looks like the closer you get to a 1.5 post haste/quiver/SS modification, the more dps you'll see theorycrafted. All things being perfect (human element, latency, not actually moving), your dps will increase the closer you get to 1.5 speed. This is due to the fact that over time, amongst other reasons, you'll get in more steady shots. Actually playing will be likely far different. What you'd have to consider are things like mana consumption, latency, reaction time, and the ability to weave in KC if you want. I think part of the key to playing beastmaster is to individually figure out what post haste/quiver/SS modification attack speed you can handle.

I posted this in the "2.1.3 undocumented changes" thread, but I figure more hunters will see it here.

Just got done killing Lurker, pets are completely immune to Spout damage now. They still take damage from Whirl and Geyser, but even so, hunters shouldn't have any problems keeping their pets alive on Lurker anymore.

If you put Kill Command before the /castsequence, it will occur before you start casting Steady. Here's what I'm using, for reference:

/cast [target=pet, dead] [pet] Kill Command
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Lightning Breath
/castsequence Steady Shot

I guess you forgot a ",Autoshot" in your castsequence, but apart from that, are you sure that this always casts the Kill command between auto and steady?

And getting back on the haste items, I played around a bit more.

Lets just say you go crazy and get all hasted items, which would be:

Thottbot World of Warcraft: Bindings of Lightning Reflexes 2.6% haste
Thottbot World of Warcraft: Shoulders of Lightning Reflexes 3.5% haste
Thottbot World of Warcraft: Band of Devastation 2.9% haste
Thottbot World of Warcraft: Crystalweave Cape 2.5% haste
Thottbot World of Warcraft: Fists of Mukoa 3.5% haste
Thottbot World of Warcraft: Valestalker Girdle 3.4% haste

This would bring your autoshot down to 1.75 from 2.9 as a BM. Steady would be around 0.9 secs.

Now for the sake of theorycrafting, lets say you are capable of maintaining the following rotation:

0 Auto cast start
0,5 Auto fire
0,7 Steady cast start
1,6 Steady fire
1,75 Auto cast start
2,25 Auto fire
2,45 Steady cast start
3,35 Steady fire
3,5 Auto cast start
4 Auto fire
4,2 Steady cast start
5,1 Steady fire
5,25 Auto cast start
5,75 Auto fire
5,95 Steady cast start
6,85 Steady fire
7 Auto cast start
7,5 Auto fire
7,7 Steady cast start
8,6 Steady fire
8,75 from beginning

Thats a full 5/5 auto/steady rotation in 8.75 seconds, compared to the 10.5 seconds it would take you without the items.

Now, entering this in my sheet and disregarding other things like IAoth and RF, this ups my dps from 1147 dps to 1376dps. (base was 2050 RAP, 33,5% crit)
While I didnt make the adjustment to my own stats related to the gear exchanges, this example gives a dps increase of 229 dps, while taking away the option to use kill command.

Now with that kind of gear kill command is just a bit above 100dps (all values pre armor), and still trying to use it in that rotation would result in a large total loss.

So, as a little preview of how it might look in 2-3 months, when the larger guilds have their Hyjal and BT gear, it seems kill command might get useless again.

Edit: The sad thing is, you would really need all 6 items to get the large benefit out of it and drop kill command. And the shoulders are BoP and the cape really sucks statwise. The other items are still really nice. But anything in between will result in a mess while trying to maintain kill command and clip autoshots while not getting the superb damage out of the rotation.

Edit 2: If its true that you can use a macro to always do the kill command before a steady without getting any clipping problems, then each item one by one is a large boost.

I think I'll try the macro tonight and also maybe unequip the quiver to get to 1.75 speed under rapid fire to see how it works out.

Well, this really begs the question of how quickly you can insert KC then steady. Since KC doesn't trigger the GCD, presumably this would be a function of the server client interaction. I'm not as well versed as others at the server-client arrangement, but it seems to me that once you cast KC, you have to wait for the server the acknowledge that it has been cast before you can start steady. Is this not true? If it is, KC has an effective 'cast time' of 2*latency.

Given that the largest gap between the end of steady and beginning of auto is 0.15 seconds, that would require a 2*latency of 0.075 seconds (75 milliseconds). That's not out of the realm of possibility, although it is a pretty good ping. Also, it's worth noting that I'm not including reaction time and client latency in that number, which would probably be a large percentage of 0.15 seconds, further restricting the requisite ping. It's probably not possible in any practical sense to insert KC at that attack speed.

I don't think a macro could cope at that speed, either. Remember, if you use castsequence auto, steady you're going to have the 2*latency problem (server has to confirm cast of one to allow the macro to move forward) which will create all kinds of havoc at such tight timing. I'm not sure how well (or if) the /castrandom Kill Command /cast steady works, but if it requires only 1 keystroke it might work for you.

I also dont believe it will be possible to squeeze a kill command in there, but the point of my post was that I believe it will be the best combination to reach the highest dps as far as the game goes at this moment. Get all +haste gear and drop kill command for a pure auto/steady rotation without rapid fire and without IAoth.

The macro that was posted that goes KC then cast steadyshot is one that requires manual weaving.

A way to macro it without using manual weaving is making two macros. This limits the ability to use KC on cooldown since it generaly requires one auto/steady rotation after the crit has landed to start but it allows you to macro in a KC at fast speeds without relying on arcane shot.

/castsequence Auto Shot, Steady shot

and another

/castsequence Auto Shot, Kill Command, Steady Shot

Spam the first, realize a crit occured, spam second while firing a steady started with the first.