SURVIVAL Raiding in 2.1

Howitzer · 05/25/07, 9:24 PM

We all know that Beast Mastery is the king of DPS right now but there is a definite desire for Survival hunters since many of us are taking the sacrificial route for the benefit of our raid's overall DPS, (or a change of pace), or simply are interested in knowing if they should make the switch to this spec for raiding at all.

From testing Survival post 2.1 I've come to some conclusions from a few raids in SSC and TK.

WWS Logs for Hydross 2.1 kill:

Totals:
http://netigen.com/kuya/wws-20070522-Hydross2.1/
Breakdown:
http://netigen.com/kuya/wws-20070522.../howitzer.html

971 DPS sustained over a 10 minute period with an average 40% crit rate, (lotp was present for 1/2 the fight roughly). While I do agree that BM is probably the higher DPS on a single target if the pet can remain alive and attacking for the duration, the MM spec does not seem to have the umph that it used to after this patch. According to the logs, Survival gave me (Mana) 6,750 returned from Thrill of the Hunt in that Hydross fight which is the equivalent of 2 fel mana potions for free, not to mention the 200~ AP buff to the entire raid from Expose weakness being up almost 100% of the time.

My personal issue is spec as I can't warrant getting master tactician in its current form. I believe its not worth it over the benefit of improved aspect of the hawk, (maybe this is ignorance). My question is for the survival hunters here or those that are more prone to theorycrafting as to which talent can provide higher dps output, (has anyone crunched the numbers comparing the two talents)? I believe there is a crit threshold once you hit roughly 33% unbuffed where more isn't necessarily better. The only thing I really see as the most valuable aspect of this tree is EW and ToTH. My experiences with Readiness have been somewhat lackluster.

Goreshot · 05/25/07, 11:45 PM

I believe there's already a thread discussion survival-specced hunters, along with several of the already-existing threads containing specks of discussion here and there. You might want to post this in one of those, instead of creating a brand new one. Survival's damage is always going to be contingent upon the amount of physical DPS present in the raid, but it is pretty apparent that the increased DPS from the other people, along with the increase in your own DPS, at least equals the damage loss from not being Marksmanship specced. It probably surpasses it. In addition to its superior damage, BM also gives its party a 3% damage increase, regardless of damage type. That can easily add an additional 100-150 DPS to the raid as a whole, depending upon the composition of your group.

That being said, Master Tactician is a waste of points. Your best bet is to put enough points (36) into Survival to get Expose Weakness, then leaving the tree entirely for Mortal Shots. Those last five points would be up to your discretion, although most would probably dump them in IAotH for "pure DPS" reasons. You could very easily justify spending those points to get Scatter Shot, Barrage, and Wyvern Sting instead. That's what I would do. =P

AndrewCarr · 05/26/07, 12:39 AM

Yeah, but is 5 points in IAotH > 5 in MT? I don't think anyone's covered this explicitly. I believe the math's been done awhile back to show that with the weapons most people use, MT is equivalent to just over 5% crit.

Right now, if you opt to max TotH and EW instead of getting focused fire, it looks like you've got three choices:

utility(wyvern, barrage or resourcefulness, ss), damage(5/5 IAotH), or damage option 2(5/5 MT).

Since crit %'s for survival hunters seem to vary quite a bit, and crit becomes less useful as your crit rate increase(as I understand it), it'd be nice to figure out if ~5% crit will be better than IAotH at 30%, and if it still will when you're at 45% crit.

Also, just came up with an idea. For those of you that don't care for TotH because you have the consumables and party comp to cover your mana needs, what about a 29/32 build?

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=VZVVdRVzhLZchhRdfMhV0b

It gives 4% from RWS, Barrage, and Scatter shot, vs say a 7/20/34 or 7/21/33 build which will have Focused Fire(2% + KC bonus) and IAotH. To me at least, it seems like a posibly alternative, especially if IAotH is messing up your rotation at all.

Howitzer · 05/26/07, 1:24 AM

Thats what I'm wondering. If the crit rate is at 35 unbuffed and guessing 40% or so fully buffed / potted, then isn't MT almost totally useless? Then would the IAoTH be a greater dps boost than to pop points into barrage etc? And Gore, I just found thread [Hunter] The Survivor, but sadly there is no real information in there that breaks down the numbers.

The Iron Colonel · 05/26/07, 10:45 AM

Originally Posted by Howitzer

Thats what I'm wondering. If the crit rate is at 35 unbuffed and guessing 40% or so fully buffed / potted, then isn't MT almost totally useless? Then would the IAoTH be a greater dps boost than to pop points into barrage etc? And Gore, I just found thread [Hunter] The Survivor, but sadly there is no real information in there that breaks down the numbers.

No numbers there yet, but hopefully that thread will blossom and bear the delicious fruit of theory. Now, if only people could back up anecdotal evidence with empirical and theoretical evidence in that thread, we'd be set.

Howitzer · 05/26/07, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by The Iron Colonel

No numbers there yet, but hopefully that thread will blossom and bear the delicious fruit of theory. Now, if only people could back up anecdotal evidence with empirical and theoretical evidence in that thread, we'd be set.

There's too much emo in that thread. Its mostly back and forth arguing at one person's opinion over another without any proof to back up claims. What I would like to see is some intelligent convo on optimizing survival spec and gear while comparing the end tier MT talent vs other choices, etc. Hopefully the delicious fruit of that theory will show itself.

Here is Guyman's post on Survival and his thoughts on it:

Hey Howitzer, I've been reading your various posts about both BM and Survival in 2.1. I was actually survival before 2.1 and I was able to do pretty solid DPS. I don't exactly have charts readily available, but I was around 700+ dps on Gruul using a 0/20/41 build. My gear was sub-par, mostly heavy-agi blues and a few epics. Unbuffed I was around 30-31% crit.

In my opinion, I believe that once you reach an unbuffed level of 34-35% crit, improved hawk surpasses Master Tactician. Putting out more shots with that level of critting is going to be more effective than a few seconds of virtually guaranteed crits. I'm not sure myself if Master Tactician is really able to compare to improved aspect of the hawk, recently checking your armory, I see that you've respecced into 0/21/40 so hopefully you can verify that for yourself.

Also, do you think 3 points in expose weakness is really necessary? I was thinking of just 2 points for my survival build, given the duration of the debuff, I figured, there would be a pretty good chance of reproccing it.

From what I've seen so far taking on MT 4/5 at 35% unbuffed crit it seems like a waste. One other person suggested possibly investing 3/3 barrage and Wyvern sting which seems nice but not sure if it will will surpass IAoTH. Guyman is leaning towards what I am assuming in that a 1st tier BM talent surpasses the usefulness of MT that is so deep into the survival tree. The other thing that he brings up is investing all 3 points into EW. Do you need a solid 45% crit to have EW up 100% of the time with only 2/3 EW?

Lactose · 05/26/07, 12:31 PM

Originally Posted by Howitzer

Do you need a solid 45% crit to have EW up 100% of the time with only 2/3 EW?

Without 100% crit Expose Weakness will never be up 100% of the time, regardless of talent points invested.

Other than that...
Uptime = 1 - (ChanceNotToProc^Attacks)
Uptime is a value between 0 and 1, ratio of how much it's up. Uptime*100 = Uptime in percentage.
Attacks = Number of attacks you make in 7 seconds. Most likely this is not an integer, i.e. you might have 5.5 shots each 7 second cycle. If so, averaging out the uptime for 5 and 6 should be a close enough approximation.

With 3/3, ChanceNotToProc = 1-Crit%
With 2/3, ChanceNotToProc = 1-( (Crit%)*(2/3) )
With 1/3, ChanceNotToProc = 1-( (Crit%)*(1/3) )

Some superfluous parenthesis there, but it's to avoid confusion. This, along with a rough knowledge of how often you attack, should be sufficient for determining your average uptime.

The Iron Colonel · 05/26/07, 2:27 PM

In response to questions specifically related to iAotH, keep in mind that haste won't be an easy thing to model with Survival or Marks. Even with a relatively slow bow (say the 3.0 bow from Vashj), when iAotH procs you've got a 3.0/(1.15*1.15)=2.27 attack speed. At this speed you probably will be forced to change your rotation, meaning you can't simply model iAotH as a uptime percentage based haste increase (i.e. increase base damage by a percentage equal to the percentage haste). Given that Survival and Marks are probably using an on-availability 2 special per auto rotation, this complicates matters.

What I would suggest doing is determine the average dps for each of the two rotations (a rotation for use with quick shots and for use without quick shots) and then do a weighted average of the two based on uptime for QS. This won't be perfect, as it would be exceptionally difficult to have a smooth transition between the two without dropping a shot, but this would give you a theoretical maximum dps (i.e. the dps if you were a cyborg who never screwed up transitioning from one rotation to another). I don't have time this weekend to jump into much math, but Lactose's post gives the basic equation for uptime (which can be modified to work with iAotH very easily).

JBale · 05/27/07, 8:49 PM

Rather interested in what people come up with, as a well geared hunter I just specced 21/marks and the rest in survival, so far it seems pretty good.

For the build search Jbale on the armory

Norwest · 05/28/07, 10:14 AM

I'm not sure this had been covered. Tell me if it has. Between hunters, rogues, warriors, shamans, druids etc we say 9 physical DPS in a raid. Count the pets and tanks as another 1, so 10 Physical DPS.

So every point of agi on a SV hunter (1.25 agi with BoK and LR) becomes:
1.3 AP on the Hunter
3.125 AP on the group

So:
1 agi gives 4.425 AP
2 AP gives 2.08 AP (with survival instincts)
For the same item point cost.

Some quick math gives
http://thottbot.com/i25838 - Warden's Hawberk = 296.5 AP
better than:
http://thottbot.com/i29082 - Demonstalker T4 Chest = 294.0 AP

That's not even counting better crit on the Warden's. Gear choices are hard to make general statements about. But some quick math show to me that for raiding a lvl 62 rep reward is better than the first tier raiding set. It's pretty hard to justify sacrificing almost any agi for any other stat when looking at raid-wide DPS.

The Iron Colonel · 05/28/07, 10:29 AM

Be wary of using situational raid composition buffs to justify gear choices. They are a consideration, yes, but not the sole determinant of gear worth (particularly as raid composition tends to be highly variable for many guilds). Personal dps is likely more important than 2.5 AP worth of situational raid buffs, in my opinion, but that's just me (boundary cases like that are really judgment calls, IMO, but if you can prove it with math that it's not be my guest). Frankly, if you make a gear decision based on raid composition you may find yourself in a bad position (if you're having a physical dps-light raid, your contributed dps has plummeted with the Warden's versus T4, in the scenario presented).

For example, if we used raid buffed damage as justification for raid spots, there'd be little reason not to take only shadow priests and warlocks.

Sapa · 05/28/07, 10:40 AM

Originally Posted by Norwest

I'm not sure this had been covered. Tell me if it has. Between hunters, rogues, warriors, shamans, druids etc we say 9 physical DPS in a raid. Count the pets and tanks as another 1, so 10 Physical DPS.

So every point of agi on a SV hunter (1.25 agi with BoK and LR) becomes:
1.3 AP on the Hunter
3.125 AP on the group

So:
1 agi gives 4.425 AP
2 AP gives 2.08 AP (with survival instincts)
For the same item point cost.

Some quick math gives
http://thottbot.com/i25838 - Warden's Hawberk = 296.5 AP
better than:
http://thottbot.com/i29082 - Demonstalker T4 Chest = 294.0 AP

That's not even counting better crit on the Warden's. Gear choices are hard to make general statements about. But some quick math show to me that for raiding a lvl 62 rep reward is better than the first tier raiding set. It's pretty hard to justify sacrificing almost any agi for any other stat when looking at raid-wide DPS.

Add crit value of agi for hunter.
And take EW uptime in consideration.
Third thing... gain of DPS from this AP varies among classes.
Forth tanks generate more threat, allowing for more dps.

Interesting thing to think about. (goes to wowhead, searching fro blue leather)

Yes some blues are far better than some epics. Im using BP of Rapid Striking... 68lvl AH item for 30g. And intended upgrade is Hydoss drop (ranger general) + minor hit rating changes in other gear. Mmm AH vs SSC.

2 interesting things:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31286 - BP of Rapid Striking
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29147 - Talbuk Hide Spaulders

Drawback of these blue items most of times is lack of stamina or other important stat. Dead DPS doesn't dps some like to say.

Edit:
And like Colonel said. Its situational, we had 2 rogues, 1 hunter and 4tanks on morgrim 2 weeks ago :/

The Iron Colonel · 05/28/07, 9:50 PM

Originally Posted by Sapa

And like Colonel said. Its situational, we had 2 rogues, 1 hunter and 4tanks on morgrim 2 weeks ago :/

I don't want to poo-poo the approach of looking at total dps added, but if you're going to go that route to examine the contributions of one person, you have to do the whole raid (in my opinion, otherwise you're not comparing apples to apples when making composition decisions). I would just advise you to take either a conservative approach and assume minimum physical dps (such that you can always expect to add at least that much dps to the raid) or look at a spectrum of possible compositions and then determine the best way to average that (the arithmetic mean might not be the best measure to use, since the AP from EW scales linearly with number of physical dpsers, but the general concept might still be valid if you used some other measure).

Lumi · 05/28/07, 10:14 PM

I'm not sure why you guys are running with little melee, but I guess its a recuitment issue. Since the changes, rogues are worth 3 spots. So is an enhancement shaman and on some fights a dps warrior.

Superkaj · 05/28/07, 10:33 PM

I'd say its largely a matter of group composition aswell.
The perfect melee groups is Dps warr, rogue, rogue, enh shaman, feral druid.
If you take much more than that as melee dps you'll have one of them sitting out of that group.

So while they might be worth more after the changes it just isnt that clearcut.
Sorry for a slight derail.