It's a bug. Debuffs seem to have a range that is unaffected by current 'extend log range' commands.

I ran into this issue writing an Expose Weakness Uptime mod. Gave up in the the end. The mod works fine but not when you're too far away for debuffs to be logged. Hence the mod is useless for now.

Thks for the feedback Kabuto,
It could be a range reduction with the arena patch that prevent players from to seeing their opponents in the Combat Log before the combat start!!

that's a lot of mana regen from toth.

I just have a few questions/comments after looking over this thread...

I do not understand how people justify getting 3/3 barrage and 2 points into some other talent over 5/5 IAotH. I was just curious how spending these 5 points not in IAotH is more beneficial to your role as a survival hunter. Also, as I sifted through this thread I noticed there was a list of potential gear for a survival hunter posted on one of the earlier pages. In this list there was no showing of Scaled Greaves of the Marksman. I thought of these legs to be at least on par with Void Reaver Leggings and I am curious as to why they were not added. Thanks for listening.

From my understanding, the reason people choose to put those 5 points into the Marks tree (3/3 Barrage, Scatter Shot, etc.) or further into the Surv tree is because it is difficult to manage the haste procs of ImpAotH when you are using a 1:1.5 shot cycle. Continuing the 1:1.5 cycle during the haste effects will cause you to clobber your autoshots, so you would pretty much have to switch to a 1:1 everytime QuickShots procs.

If you use Cheeky's sheet with a Max Special rotation, you will see that there are other talents that you can choose which will offer more dps for a Surv build.

I am retarded and cannot get the spreadsheet to work properly. Does anyone have a link to a post or know the numbers on IAotH vs. Barrage?

Ressurecting some old posts from page 5 here:

First of all i dont know if the above average gain is correct (25 agility). I'm assuming the normal modifiers apply on the on use effect as well?

If so it will be (with LR and Kings):
120/6 = 6
150*1.15*1.1/6 = 31,625 agility
31,625/40 = 0,79% crit
31,625*0.25 = 7,9ap EW contribution

If the passive benefit can be expressed as above the overall benefit would be:
38,9 ap
0,79% crit

- Along with a 20 sec raidwide ap bonus of 47,4ap from expose weakness

Now i havent had any luck with either the DST or the Tsunami talisman, so im currently using bloodlust broch and abacus of violent odds. Switching abacus for tenacity, assuming the above is correct, would produce:

38,9 - 64 + 260/12 = -46,76ap
+0.79% crit
+7,9ap raidbuff

With some creative trinket swapping the downtime of having no useful passive trinket stats can be brought down a little, but this seems highly situational so i didnt include anything about that.

As im far from the mathemathical level of genius seen among other theorycrafters, i'd like someone better qualified than myself to look over the numbers and mayhaps tweak and crunch them a bit.

Opinions?

Zurgat:

Many of the items in your gear list need to be updated, as 10agi gems are only available for red sockets. Blue and yellow sockets have a maximum of 5.

You can use red gems in blue and yellow sockets.

You can put any color gem in any socket. The socket colors are only meaningful for the item bonus.

Color me noob. Thanks.

This much is obvious after all I'm a troll (racial == style!), but that's not the point of my post. I'm in a guild currently raiding TK and SSC (we've killed everything up to Kael'thass) and while I enjoy being a hunter, I've gotten tired of MM, but am not all that fond of BM. For now, the raid is slightly caster heavy (60-70%?), and everytime I try to go survival I get dropped from raids. When I asked about justifying my spot (since I add more than the MM hunter), I was told to find the hard math.

I realize this is alot of work, (I think it involves me checking our raid makeup for 2-3 weeks to see how much physical dps shows up and how often I crit and what my bonus ends up being) but I wonder where should I start or if anyone has any tips on how to go about this. I'm normally casual, but I've been reading this place since 'why some don't get it' and like to put in the math to optimize my character.

Also, EW seems like an obvious choice but I do less damage personally as survival. I would like to hear ideas to improve surv personal dps.

For DPS gain, http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t12346-h...12/#post452126 and onwards.

As for uptime, that's pretty easy to calculate as well, and with maxed Expose Weakness you can be fairly certain it's up at least 90-95% of the time, as long as you're just attacking the target and not doing random stuff.

Just some quick pointers:

Calculate your EW chance of refreshing using your shots per 7 seconds and 1 - (1-CRIT)^SHOTS. This should approximate uptime.

Calculate your EW bonus AP and multiply it by uptime for an effective AP added to each melee.

Download class dps spreadsheets for your melee dps. Download threat per second spreadsheets for your tanks. Plug in their numbers and then modify them by your EW buff to get the dps/tps added by EW.

Lactose; the whole thread shows how to be a good survival hunter, but they don't show how to present the evidence to others. I'll still dip about it though.

Zure; Where can I find these spreadsheets and thank you very much.

Also, thoughts on Mortal Shots vs Master Tactician? This isn't my current build, just looking at it.
note; endurance is not iaoth because im being mana cautious.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The link is to a post in this thread, where some discussion about just this (raid DPS, etc) starts.

Being survival doesn't necessarily mean a crippled personal dps. Now, I can't put out 1500 as survival, but I can stay competitive, in the 900-1300 range, depending on the fight. Given sufficient gear and a good understanding of shot rotation, you should be doing similar damage compare to other dps classes (except rogues in the melee group). Ask for SP/feruid/shaman when you can, but pick SP if you only have 1 choice. Always keep a good supply of major agi pots, warp burger, and scroll of agility in inventory. Timely kill commands when both arcane and multi are down can boost your dps by 15-30. Time your autoshots so you still move and do damage on mobility fights. All the little things add up in the long run.

And 5/5 mortal shot is a must for a hunter, even moreso the case being survival.

Hi guys.

Recently my guild has been struggling with DPS issues. I took a few WWS parses recently and spent a long time going through each player and suggesting improvements, weeding out bad specs and getting slackers to enchant their gear etc...

We've already seen a good improvement in DPS which is great but as you can probably guess by me posting in this thread, I'm having difficulties with a survivalist hunter.

Now I've got nothing against this spec, its just I've got no experience with it. I've read through this thread fully now but still have a few questions. The guy seems to know what hes doing but a few problems arose:

1) He has pretty low personal DPS. Now I know your spec isn't reknowned for its high personal DPS in favour of the raid buff but even with that considered this seems low (from the dps stats posted in this thread)

2) At least 2 pieces of his gear don't have any agility on at all (Prince ring + T4 shoulders). I put it to him that he'd be better off swapping the shoulders for your D3 shoulders with 2x+8 agi gems but he won't hear about going from epic to blue. Am I right or is it worth the shoulders even though they have no agility? To note would be he would lose the 4 T4 bonus if he dropped the shoulders.
Also tied in with this point is that I don't think he has enough agility to pull this spec off. Figures thrown about in this thread seem to indicate an 800 agi unbuffed as the required agi for this spec. Hes about 700.

3) He is adamant that Aimed shot is the best shot to restart his shot cycle after hes had to move (the fight was gruul so moving from shatter/cave in). Now this goes againt everything I've read on hunters in this thread and the BM thread and it would seem to me he could get an auto and steady in place of the aimed. Again, whats the general opinion on this?

His armoury:
The Armory

The WWS for him:
Plavalaguna - WWS

His stats (that he posted in our priv forum thread):


Thanks for any replies.

Hi there.

There are a few things he can do to improve his dps (well at least on Gruul):

1) From that Gruul WWS, it seems he doesnt use his pet whatsoever. Make him use it and call him back to his side if there's a cave in.

2) What aspect is he using? If he's using AotV make him swap to AotH and use mana pots, at least on DPS fights. If he's tight on mana on Gruul, he can always swap when he's getting Grasped and Stoned, that should give him a few seconds of mana regen I guess.

3) Serpent sting is a no-no. Its a lot of mana for very poor damage (minor detail, was only 1% of his total damage). Aimed shot should only be used for misdirection (i.e. max 3-4 on Gruul), since its very mana intensive and delays your autoshot too much.

4) He's not in a "buffed" group - SP or Feral druid or Shaman or BM/MM hunter, have you considered this while comparing his DPS to other members of the raid? And as such, have you considered giving him a spot in one of those groups?

5) Is he using agility pots + mana oils + buff food on boss fights? Make him do so.

6) Gear-wise, I would take other items for his shoulders and ring items that have at least some agility (BL shoulders + Pathfinder's band are good for example, they'd give him a good +50agi while losing a bit of crit and hit possibly). The 4pc T4 bonus is pretty useless to be honest, and he isn't even using multishot in his rotation on Gruul.

7) Give him BoMight instead of BoSalv next time... FD should be fine on a boss fight like Gruul. Giving his pet BoMight is also a good idea - if he actually uses it...

Thats about all I can think of for the moment, hope it helps

Demon Stalker Shoulderguards with his current gems:
12*1.15*1.1 = 15.18 agility
15.18*0.25 = 3.795 EW contribution
19/22.1 + 15.18/40 = 1.24% crit
15.18+3.795+44 = 62.975 ap

Beast Lord Mantle with the same gem setup:
37*1.15*1.1 = 46.805 agility
46.805*0.25 = 11.7 EW contribution
46.805/40 = 1.17% crit
46.805+11.7+34 = 92.505 ap

All in all equipping the blue shoulders instead of the T4 ones, he would gain 29.53ap and lose only 0.07% crit while increasing the raid buff with 7.9ap in a raid environment.

As the poster above stated he should lose the ring of a thousand marks as well and get a proper agility oriented ring instead. Lastly, i see he is wearing belt of the black eagle. As survival he should be wearing belt of deep shadow.

Edit:
He should remember to see past the stats on an item and see the stats with lightning reflexes and blessing of kings scaling on top. Agility is worth more than it seems, especially as survival. In general he should be looking at each point of agility as being ~1.58ap and ~0.03% crit when buffed with blessing of kings.

I am no expert on Survival Hunters, but his gear isn't drastically worse than mine, and I do almost twice his DPS. Figuring out why is trickier.

1) Personal DPS
As other have pointed out, there is no pet listed there. Either his pet isn't being merged or he isn't using one. Even for a Survival Hunter, the pet is worth 100-175 DPS most fights. So he definitely should be using a pet. And for any fair comparison with other DPS classes, the pet needs to show up in WWS.
Ask him what consumables he's using. I generally use Major Agility, Mageblood, Mana Oil, and Warp Burgers, although this varies a bit from one fight to another.
He does not appear to be using any mana potions. That also makes a very big difference to Hunters of all kinds. Fel Mana pots are best, if those are available.

2) Gear
The ring and T4 shoulders aren't terrible for a Survival Hunter. In fact, I used those shoulders for almost a month (but I never did see any better alternatives drop). Survival Hunters need high crit as well as high Agility to keep Expose Weakness up. But if he has the Beast Lord Mantle, that is a better item for him. I admit, it doesn't look as cool as T4...
Edit: Also, Survival Hunters tend to have mostly +Agilty gems and ignore the set bonuses (unless it's 1 red, 1 other and a +Agility set bonus where a hybrid gem is not an Agility loss). He could improve his Agility some by using more red gems.

3) Aimed Shot...
This is generally a bad thing to see in a Hunter's WWS. I use it periodically for Misdirects on threat-sensitive fights, but you do NOT want Aimed Shot in your regular rotation. It is not a "good opener" as I've heard many Hunters claim.
Serpent Sting is also a waste of mana most of the time (although it can be useful right before a ground slam to keep up a little DPS).
And he doesn't seem to be using Multi-Shot at all. One of the big things that has improved my personal DPS is using Multi-Shot more often.


For comparison, my own stats from our last Gruul kill:
Nyidi - WWS

Even with a Shadow Priest this run, I had to use 2 Fel Mana pots.
Note how my hits are spread out more between Steady, Arcane, and Multt-Shot.
Note how I have a pet with a fairly high DPS time.
On the other hand, your Hunter beat my DPS time by a good margin. We use a "safe spot" strategy on Gruul, which can reduce DPS time a little, but it is something I clearly need to work on. And my pet may have been facing Gruul part of that run, given the miss rates.

I was wondering how good would 5/5 Imp Arcane Shot be? since 5 sec CD in a 1:1.5 rotation it would match it perfectly. Anyone has done some testing or something?