Beast Mastery Bible - Page 182

bluetang · 01/26/08, 5:03 AM

After playing around with the "new" macro and the "old" macro I tried out making a small tweak to the macro and I got a slight increase in dps. My gear is mostly Kara and gladiator gear (i know it doesn't compare to most here), I was using the sunfury bow and this macro...

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast !Auto Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill command
/castsequence arcane shot, steady Shot, steady shot, steady shot, steady shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Here is my question. Why did this increase my dps over the "new" and "old" macros? I got ~20 dps more with this arcane shot macro over anything else I tried. Does this seem correct?

-B

Koroshiya · 01/26/08, 6:13 AM

Sorry I know this is tooting my own horn, but I like how my original post of Most Mana, Most DPS, and Less Mana, Less DPS is catching on... ;-P

Originally Posted by bluetang

After playing around with the "new" macro and the "old" macro I tried out making a small tweak to the macro and I got a slight increase in dps. My gear is mostly Kara and gladiator gear (i know it doesn't compare to most here), I was using the sunfury bow and this macro...

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast !Auto Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill command
/castsequence arcane shot, steady Shot, steady shot, steady shot, steady shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Here is my question. Why did this increase my dps over the "new" and "old" macros? I got ~20 dps more with this arcane shot macro over anything else I tried. Does this seem correct?

-B

But to make this not just a useless post, I can only guess that the reason your DPS increased using the above macro is because of your latency, or because of your chosen shot rotation. Contrary to what most believe a 1:1 steady only rotation is not always the best rotation. Play around with Cheeky's spreadsheet and find a good shot rotation for you with your current gear and you'll get some ideas to try out. After you find a few optimal shot rotations make sure you check the Time to Mana Exhaustion field to make sure the rotation can hold you through the whole fight...

Wunlastri · 01/26/08, 1:05 PM

Originally Posted by Seipher

FD no longer takes you OOC on boss fights.

I thought blizzard intended to make it hunters could drink again. I know they didn't want us changing clothes in boss fights and all, but still...

Skora · 01/27/08, 12:08 AM

Newbish question but not sure what to do at this point. Take in mind I was only recently (in last month or so) to take up my hunter as my main again since guild I am in lacks hunters.

Here is shot rotation I use (I got it from a hunter friend in another guild who always topped the charts with this macro from when i was guilded with him up to killing Vashj and first VR):

/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=3, Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/cast [target=pet, dead]; [nopet]; [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()

You can also see the gear I have in armory link:

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...hridge&n=Skora

Problem is that my DPS varies too much. Even when going side by side with another hunter in guild who has almost the exact same gear or very similar he pulls off anywhere btw 1000 to 1500 dps depending on if he is actually trying or not while I am doing the same rotation and all we did was spam the macro and I don't get anywhere close. Granted we both weave in Arcane shot ever few steadys and use BW as much as possible.

Granted none of this may seem good to many of you but guild I am in just got into MH and thus BT and downed first 3 bosses in MH. I should be doing alot better but not sure if its my rotation or how I weave in other shots or gear selection (although I haven't had much luck with several drops).

Any help on pointing me in right direction would be great. My normal dps spot in raid is around 7 to 10th and honestly it should be btw 3rd to 7th, several of our casters/melee dps are extremely skilled at what they do so depending on fight is rather I am ahead of them or not.

Nidhighe · 01/27/08, 12:38 AM

Hey guys, first off great thread going here. I don't have extensive hunter knowledge, and don't pretend that I do. I figured this was the best place to get ahold of the people who know what to do, so here goes.

My guild just xferred servers and we have quite a few new faces to raiding. Our BM hunter sucks for dps. By sucks, I mean barely staying ahead of the MT on boss fights. Gear isn't that big of an issue (she has the epic bow from heroic SV, as well as roughly 1/2 of her kara epics), we have her focusing on getting her hit rating up and maintaining a decent AP and crit. She's 41/20 BM specced, and I set her up with a basic 1:1 Auto / Steady rotation with Kill Command in the macro, but it doesn't seem to help much. I don't want to derail the thread, if anyone would be kind enough to PM me some helpful info, or just post it here, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for your time.

Thorongil · 01/27/08, 9:31 AM

Originally Posted by Wunlastri

I thought blizzard intended to make it hunters could drink again. I know they didn't want us changing clothes in boss fights and all, but still...

Just try to do it, it doesn´t work.

Fimotik · 01/27/08, 6:54 PM

Originally Posted by KlaDie

[EDIT - text deleted from quote]

- I have a horrible Ping of 200ms, even with a good connection, how can this affect my damage?

[EDIT - text deleted from quote]

Horrible ping of 200ms? Try being on an Oceanic server (Australia, New Zealand, Singapore etc) 350ms is bliss for us, 400-500 the normal raiding latency.... I'd happily swap you :-)

Slaymode · 01/27/08, 10:56 PM

Hey all, sorry for the off-topic/rather noobish question in the midst of all this theorycraft. I initially leveled a hunter at the beginning of TBC and stopped playing him after some basic raiding. I'm interested in picking it back up so I began with this thread. However, after 109 pages, finding specific information is a tough task. My question, while rather simple, is what is the current "best" pet for BM raiding, dps wise. I know initially it was wind serpent pre-nerf, then scorpid pre-nerf. The beginning pages of this thread mention cats/ravagers as the top while the end pages all mention LB during tests. Are wind-serpents the king again? Cheeky's spreadsheet shows me that they are, but if someone could confirm that/provide some reasoning i'd appreciate it.

Rend · 01/28/08, 6:04 AM

This fancy new Steady/Auto Macro seems to be pretty good stuff, at least für BM Hunters who use those two shot almosts exclusively. I was wondering if other specs can put it to good use too?

I have been MM/SV spec for a while, including 5/5 Imp. Arcane, which let me use a perfect 2:1 rotation (1 additional Arcane after every other Steady). Since the 2.3.2 patch I realize that it has become much more difficult to maintain this rotation flawlessly. In fact it now requires perfect timing, even with a 3.0 speed weapon, whereas there was quite some leeway even with a 2.9 before. I suppose this is related to the new !Autoshot-"Feature"?

What do you think is the way to go now for the unhasted builds, i.e. without Serpent's Swiftness? Pure Steady all the way or is it still possible to put shot weaving to good use?

Cheeky · 01/28/08, 10:55 AM

Originally Posted by Path

Sorry for the long first post, but I've done some analysis, and decided to throw it out there for you guys to look at.

I ran some tests, and I believe I understand what is happening with the new macro. I would be interested to see if anyone can confirm/deny my results.
Tests run using 2.9s sunfury; BM spec, no AOTH, to proc trinkets, no haste, 15% quiver

Basically, my issue is that going auto-steady-steady-auto-steady-auto should not work. Because of the GCD, it should create a situation such that the time between autos when casting two steadies will be at best 3.1s

0s auto
1.1s steady
1.5s GCD finishes
2.6s steady
3.1 auto

Now, this is not particularly mana efficient, and is really no better than a straight 1:1 rotation. Additionally, it doesn't explain why we get a 1:1.5 rotation instead of a 1:2.

Here is what seems to be happening based on my tests:

0s auto
1.1s steady
2.2s steady
2.7s auto

The only way the 2nd steady hits at 2.2s is if the GCD for the 1st steady begins at the start of the auto cast. If true, this is what we get:

-.5s GCD starts, auto starts
0s auto
1.0s GCD finishes
1.1s steady
2.2s steady
2.6s GCD finishes, GCD starts for next steady
2.7s auto
3.8s steady
4.1s GCD finishes
Either: 5.2 steady
4.8 auto (with the auto cast starting at 4.3s and starting the GCD for the next steady)

As you can see, the 2nd time through, the GCD is pushed back and finishes after the steadyshot. If another steady starts, we will end up with 3s between the autoshots, and an inefficient rotation. If the auto starts before we 'queue up' the next steady, then we get the 2.1s we normally get in a 1:1 rotation, and we are back on track with the GCD starting at the beginning of the autoshot cast. We end up with a nice 1:1.5 rotation looking like this:

0.0s auto
1.1s steady
2.2s steady
2.7s auto
3.8s steady
4.8s auto

5 shots in 4.8s (1.042 shots/sec), compared to a 1:1 rotation giving 4 shots in 4.2s (.952 shots/sec). That is nearly a 10% improvement in shot output.

Based on the tests I ran, the steady shot won't start to cast if an autoshot is mid cast. If it did, we would just get chain steady shots (and obviously we don't, other evidence is that the macro moves to an easy 1:1 rotation with RF procced). Now the interesting thing here is that you actually NEED some latency/slow reaction time to keep from falling into the inefficient 1:2 rotation. I noticed that a few times I fell into an a-s-s-a-s-s-a, and each time, the cast time between my subsequent autoshots was ~3.0s. To get a perfect 1:1.5 rotation with the new macro, you need a .2s latency/reaction time delay to cover up for the .2s between the GCD finishing and the start of the autoshot cast on the 1:1 portion of the rotation (when using a 2.9s weapon).

Now, if we take it a tad further, and look at a 2.7s weapon we get:

0.0s auto
1.1s steady
2.2s steady
2.7s auto
3.8s steady
4.66s auto

5 shots in 4.66s (1.073 shots/sec), compared to a 1:1 rotation giving 4 shots in 3.92s (1.02 shots/sec). Only ~5% improvement in shot output, which would clearly explain how the sunfury makes up so much ground on the faster weapons.

Well, there it is.

This is exactly the same conclusion I have reached. I'd been PMing back and forth with Lactose about it the last week. Great work on explaining it. I've done a lot of testing, and everything seems to point to this being the new mechanics.

In short:
1 - GCD is client only, and starts immediately upon sending the cast to the server
2 - Auto Shot can't be interrupted once the cast starts by other casts
3 - The next cast is "queued up" and began immediatetly after Auto Shot
4 - The server doesn't have any cooldown on Steady Shot. It counts on the client handling that through the GCD

I think it's possible to modify the Shot Rotation in the DPS spreadsheet to mimic these mechanics and create another button to model the new 3:2 rotation properly. The only problem is figuring out how to handle the jitter in how fast you can spam the macro and how much latency effects results.

Now, the question is if the GCD behavior is intended or not. As you've shown, because of the way it's done you can get 2 special shots cast in less than 1.5s. We'll have to pay close attention after 2.4 drops to see if this remains true.

Perkypenguin · 01/28/08, 11:42 AM

Because I don't know how to intelligently put this into words, I'll point it out another way.

This is in regards to auto shot firing and queueing.

Go up to a mob and fire and auto shot and arcane shot. Immediately cast Aimed Shot. .5 seconds into the cast of Aimed Shot, you'll see your 2nd auto shot go off.

What does this mean? I believe it means if Auto Shot is ready, the .5 cast will begin, regardless of what you start to cast immediately after the .5 cast begins. This is why autos are going off every 2.6 instead of 3.1 (based on the Sunfury results above).

Dhorne · 01/28/08, 1:13 PM

Hi guys: Haven't been here in a while so I need to catch up on my reading. I just have a general question to bug ya'll with if you don't mind though. My guild won't let the hunters in the guild use their pets on Gruul's fight, I guess because people just can't seem to figure out how to get away from them when they explode and people die. That being said. My question is; Is there any way I can still keep my pet active during the fight so at least I can get the bonus from FF for myself?
Any advice or comment welcome:
Thanks again!

Demlar · 01/28/08, 1:19 PM

Pets are no longer affected by Shatter, I believe, so there's no reason to not use your pet on Gruul.

Cheeky · 01/28/08, 1:22 PM

Originally Posted by Dhorne

Hi guys: Haven't been here in a while so I need to catch up on my reading. I just have a general question to bug ya'll with if you don't mind though. My guild won't let the hunters in the guild use their pets on Gruul's fight, I guess because people just can't seem to figure out how to get away from them when they explode and people die. That being said. My question is; Is there any way I can still keep my pet active during the fight so at least I can get the bonus from FF for myself?
Any advice or comment welcome:
Thanks again!

Pet's haven't been a liability on Gruul for over 6 months. They can die if you don't pay attention to a Cave-in, but that only hurts you, not the raid.

WWS of my pet on a Gruul Kill. ~100% DPS time, only ever dealt damage to Gruul.

Dhorne · 01/28/08, 1:27 PM

Originally Posted by Cheeky

Pet's haven't been a liability on Gruul for over 6 months. They can die if you don't pay attention to a Cave-in, but that only hurts you, not the raid.

WWS of my pet on a Gruul Kill. ~100% DPS time, only ever dealt damage to Gruul.

Thanks. What I was trying to figure out was how if there is a way to keep my pet active for me. I already use drums of battle to help out with the raid since they usually throw me in with rogues and druid OT's. I can still pull off pretty decent DPS by going all out on Gruul without my pet, I was just hoping there was a way to bump me up a little more.
Thanks for the feedback!