Thats exactly what I'm saying Welshy. I think if you're having problems with shot rotations you shouldn't use a macro as a crutch to learn how to TBC Hunter, (since its quite different than prior to 2.0). Better off learning it manually and then using a macro later if you feel you need it due to lag on your end or whatever.

The macro cannot decide how much time you've got left until your auto shot. The macro prevents ALL clipping. Therefore, even if I'd only clip my autoshot by .1 seconds to get in a steady, it won't cast it. Human judgement > macro. If you need a macro like this to keep up in dps, you either do not understand the math behind efficient cycles and will never do the dps you should, or you're extremely lazy and will still never keep up in dps.

If I were to use that macro it would be during times where I had some overlapping haste procs where i was unsure where my latency cutoff point was.

That's an excellent point, but here's my counterpoint: If you have 0.1 seconds before clipping an autoshot, you have very little time to react and will probably not approach the theoretical benefit minor clipping would give you. Assuming you KNOW your next shot will clip the autoshot by a tiny amount ahead of time, lets say you know right after you fired your last shot. You now have 1.5 cast time on steady (I'm using steady, perhaps considering arcane or multi would be better?) plus your latency plus your reaction time to get a shot in. I realize that I probably don't have the fastest fingers or best reaction times, but that feels like a very tight squeeze; I'd wager the vast preponderance of raiding hunters wouldn't approach the theoretical benefit of minor clipping. My guess is that most would probably delay the autoshot by enough that they would net less damage.

I'm not trying to endorse using a spam macro (again, I think they are purely testing tools), but realistically when you're getting down to tenths or hundreths of a second in terms of timing, actual practice becomes divergent from theory.

I will admit that I have very low latency and very high reaction time, but there's a simple trick. I keep two bars going, Lemme post a screen real quick to show you an example:

http://imageigloo.com/images/5179Bars.jpg

If you have no instants up, and you think your steady will be close to the auto shot, start it and don't decide yet. You'll see your timers up, if they are very close (like the .2 seconds in this image), let your steady go through. If it's too big of a clip, just step forward, and the steady will be interrupted and the auto will go through on time.

I have a similar set up (I don't have a screen to prove it, but I use the "racing bars" method), but I still find that under raid circumstances (~15-20 FPS and 200-250 ms ping) I simply don't have the reaction times to make the squeeze. I fully acknowledge that the circumstances will be different based on player (FPS and ping, that is), but I maintain that most hunters probably won't approach the theoretical benefit (although I agree that the theory does say sometimes clipping yields higher dps).

I think the moral of the story is: practice your shots and learn the rotation. Then do it again. It's the single most important aspect of raiding as a hunter (assuming you're not some kind of weird melee hunter or something). Also, set up your UI so you can see the relative cast times of auto and steady shot (I recommend the 'racing bars', but w/e works for you).

I often have latency around 50 and 60 fps. Now.. No matter how perfectly I time the shots using two bars the macro just does more.

I died on the kill go so here's a wipe on Mag, data parsing started when last add died.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=igbirszq25mh5&m

I think thats enough of dps tbh.

And yes, I was clicking. Two groups were handling that.

I agree with some of what Howitzer is preaching (learn the damn class and learn to play it manually before you use tools that do things for you), but I don't get the argument being presented against using the macro. The only argument that makes sense for not using the macro is a situation where you have high latency and you need to cast the steady *before* the Auto goes off. But in normal circumstances (normal for me, anyway), there is no way I could beat the macro for reaction time. I've tried, and I can't do it. And I will go on to suggest that 99% of human beings can't beat it, either.

If you start a Steady and want to cancel it because of your racing bars (I use the same setup, though I like the way your bars look, Bhoris, what do you use?), you can still cancel it if you're using the macro. The only thing the macro is helping you do is cast Steady immediately after Auto fires. You still have to know when you can and cannot use Steady (such as under heavy haste buffs).

I use the same thing. I have 2 bars going, one cast bar is part of AG-UF which appears right under my HP bar as well as my target's casting bar, the other is big trouble, you can see them here:

http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/6484/ssvh3.jpg

Off-topic, but I'm curious as to why you use the DS gloves?

Yours haven't dropped and the Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation I want haven't gone to me yet because of filthy rogues. (I'm not perfect you know =\) Hell, T5 gloves are in reach now. Just a matter of time before I replace these T4 gloves and my shitty T4 shoulders.

QFT. I was the OP of the big /castsequence thread in the hunter forms. I posted my rotation macro for my 3.00 speed bow with 5/5 Imp Arcane as an example. Since then I've seen dozens of hunters wondering why the macro doesn't work well for them and their 2.80 bows with 0/5 Imp Arcane. Every day I get lvl 1 alts whispering me and asking me to design a macro for them. Ok, rant off.



You will be able to time shots better manually than with a macro, no doubt there because you can time the steady before the auto goes off. The problem is, that will only start to make a difference when you get into the 2.5 - 2.4 range with iAotH. Currently, all the good epic bows leave a generous amount of slack in the rotations, so the advantage of better timing makes no difference. If Blizz releases some high DPS 2.50 bows then I'll consider manual timing.

My steady shot is just using the default cast bar modded by ECasting Bar (http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downl...-for-wow-2-0/), and then Big Trouble for the auto shot cast bar (http://www.wowinterface.com/download...gTrouble.html). The default for BT is to show the cast bar for Aimed Shot and Steady Shot also, but just turn these off and let the default cast bar handle these, and BT will show you just the auto shot cast bar.

When is arcane shot used? Do you avoid it most of the time and then use it when you have (stacking) haste procs (IAotH + Rapidfire). Do you save it for a movment shot when you have to reposistion? Or, do you use arcane in a regular rotation?

I think the difference in our interpretation of "prevents clipping" is based on the usage of the macro, not the macro itself. If I turn on autoshot and then try to use the macro, I can force it to clip. If I use the macro to enable autoshot after I fire my first steady, it won't clip.

As far as the macro itself is concerned, I really don't see a point in using it if you're marksman. You have to wedge a second special in before the auto, so the steady macro doesn't really aid you in preventing delay of the autoshot (unless you just spam the hell out of the steady macro and then try to wedge your second special in between button presses, which is kind of a brute force method to things). Once you start to stack haste effects, though, the macro really shines (although you have to tune the macro to reset the timing on it to suit your hasted conditions). Under some extreme cases of stacked haste if you maintain a steady rotation then you either have to be very good at timing shots (I'm not) or be willing to use a macro. Or stop using steady shot.

The point is that you can't just say "I stink at hunter but if I use a macro it'll be OK." It won't. You have to learn to play the class, and that takes practice and time. (I should note I consider myself as a bad hunter, though, so I don't feel condescending when I preach about practicing to improve)

I simply use eCB and LittleTrouble and make the cast bars with exact same settings. Same Width, Heigth etc.

When I was Marks, I would spam the macro (it's on my mouse scroll wheel, up and down, so it's super-easy to spam), then stop when Steady starts. Then hit Arcane or whatever, then start spamming again. When haste is active, I just stop putting the second special between Autos. You really only have to spam it right around when Auto is about to fire to get Steady going ASAP after Auto.

PS - I'm just talking about basic Steady/Auto castsequence, not a full rotation with everything and the kitchen sink.

The nice thing about the /castsequence macros is that it allows you to focus more on what is going on around you in the current raid setting, and concentrate more on movement, traps, interupts, your pet, stings, etc. rather than focusing so intently on the shot rotation that you wind up out of position and dead, or, alternatively, you screw up your shot rotation worrying about whatever else it is hunters are supposed to do other than dps.

Also, since you asked for an example, here is an example of the simplest form of steady/auto:
#show Steady Shot
/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot,Auto Shot

And a slightly more complex one (not in game to check, one of mine looks something like this) that follows a special-auto-2special-auto-special-auto-2special...etc. to work in some specials while limiting the clipping effect of the GCD:
#show Multi-Shot(Rank 6)
/castsequence reset=3 Multi-Shot,Auto Shot,Steady Shot,Auto Shot,Steady Shot,Arcane Shot,Auto Shot,Steady Shot,Auto Shot,Steady Shot

Obviously no macro will be "perfect" because you only get 250 characters or whatever, so eventually your rotation will need to repeat, and there really is no perfect junction for this for most weapon speeds that incorporate both Arcane and Multi. The best way to make a macro or series of macros is to go out to Area 52 and waste a bunch of ammo on Dr. Boom. Do your shots manually, with the entirety of your focus on timing your shots perfectly following some sort of pattern (i.e. not using multi-shot, when RF is active, full-dps without regard for mana/clipping, or something almost as high in dps but slightly more mana efficient, etc...). Basically, do your shots however you would normally trigger them if attention was focused on nothing but your 4 shots (multi-arcane-steady-auto) and their CD's/cast bars. Once you run OOM or find yourself getting into a pattern, go back into your combat log and basically copy your combat log into a macro. Now go test it out, while spamming your newly created macro, look to see where the potential downfalls might be. Are you clipping auto-shot? Is multi-shot or arcane shot off cooldown for extended periods of time? Use recap, swstats, or any dps counter of your preference and see what your dps looks like with a variety of different macros. Don't be afraid to try something that seems illogical at first, with the variety of weapon speeds and latencys out there you never know.

Now, let's say you found what you think to be a semi-decent macro or two. Now try spamming the macro and looking for the holes in which to perform additional abilities such as stings/traps/trinkets/RF with minimal loss to dps. If you find yourself regularly clipping auto-shot and loosing dps when you fit in a sting, create a macro that allows you to stop spamming for a second and fit in an additional ability. Find where to break off from your macro, move a few yards, and start it up again without getting "that ability is on cooldown" errors.

Now I'm not saying that a macro will ever increase your flat dps in a trial run, even my most heavily used/trusted macros will do slightly lower dps than if I focus my full attention to a more synergized manual shot rotation. However, if you've made a good macro, the difference will be slight. Yes, sometimes if you give a noob hunter a macro for his weapon speed, he will just sit there spamming it with no regard to what is actually happening or what shots he is using, and if he sucked to begin with, his dps will probably go up, but it will never compare to the person that created the macro in the first place and understands how it fits into what he wants to do.

So if you're thinking that this sounds like a lot of work for something that I've told you will lower a smart hunter's dps, why do it in the first place? Well, because frankly some of us (me) can't multi-task very well. When you're watching your health, your consumables, your trinket cooldowns, your pet's health, or especially when leading a raid watching other people's positions, it can sometimes become too overwhelming to watch your own cast-bars as closely as you would under ideal situations. My personal experience is that I end up doing a more damage in a raiding environment using a variety of macros even though I can do slightly more damage with a manual rotation on Dr. Boom tests. Leading a raid + focusing entirely on cast bars leads to either poor dps or other people doing stupid things.
Note: If you are more uber than me you'll do more damage without them, but for us noobs, macros are the way to go

Bah, just realized this is getting way off-topic. I'll bring it back by saying a reason against going BM is that I'll have to spend another few hours creating new macros with the 20% increase. I'm not sure how to work Kill Command into a macro, I would recommend just binding it near your other macros and spamming it whenever you're not in the act of firing steady.

/cheers

what does the /castsequence reset = 3 in the macro mean?

and how to adjust this for being BM?

Well I agree that using this macro have removed alot of the "skill" by playing a hunter.. but also I was not able to

Keep my shot rotation
Keep an eye on my pet
Keep an eye on the battle
Etc.

So now I use something like /castseqence reset=3 autoshot, steady shot

And that made me 6 or 7 on damage meters infront of our 2 hunters who have particually better gear :/ you may argue that came to easy.. but I just wanna do alot of damage.

If you don't push anything for 3 seconds, the macro resets to the first spell in the cast sequence. That's what the reset does.

i tried the /castsequence macro the last 2 days, for the first time...
it's good if you have latency and you are just standing nuking a boss, but in a lot of boss fights
you have to do more than stand and nuke.

i tested it on Dr. Boom, it didn't increase my dps when i had low latency, but if you have medium latency it helps so you reduce the time between auto shot and the next special.