Gurth

as survival hunter haste is not an option at the moment in my opinion.

the fact is: to be worth you have to stack a LOT of haste (250+ rating), since you have to use 1:1.5 rotation untill you reach at least 15% speed. In that barcket dropping to 1:1 will gimp your dps, and staying 1:1.5 will clip your autoshot a lot resulting in a very minimal (if any) increase of dps.

not to mention this will come to a significant loss in terms of stats, being it agi, ap or crit.

 

Korikin

For a survival hunter to reach use (effectively) a 1:1 rotation he would need to recoup the 20% haste gained from Serpent’s Swiftness, or 315 Haste Rating. (20% * 15.76 Haste / % )


The amount of haste needed for a BM hunter (or similarly hasted MM/Surv hunter) to bring a slower weapon down to 2.7 speed would be:

3.0 speed - > 175 haste rating
2.9 speed - > 116 haste rating
2.8 speed - > 58 haste rating


This puts the target number somewhere in the realm of 490 Haste rating (175+315). making it seem fairly unlikely that haste will be a major surv/mm stat; well, not in a full blown form at least.

Might see some BM hunters using it to make some end game weapons produce tighter rotations. But for now it seems like the lost ap/agi/crit from switching to haste gear can be a burden to dps. Especially in survival where we have a fairly unique set of itemization anyway.

 

Alaszun

I'm looking for advice on the viability of Wolfslayer as a survival spec. With a 15% ammo pouch, that comes down to 2.35 total speed. Take in 1.5 seconds for a steady shot. Multishot or arcane right after the steady shot, which should still give you enough time to get in autoshot without clipping, leaving .35 seconds total leeway in each rotation. Is my math wrong here? I know in any sort of even medicore lag this will probably cause some terrible clipping issues, but it appears to me like it should hypothetically work without problems with an attentive hunter and fairly low latency. Is there some other speed concern I'm not factoring in, or is the conventional wisdom about survival needing slower weapons than BM somewhat overvalued?

 

Trohck

0.00 Auto Shot
0.00 Steady Shot
~1.30 Steady Shot finishes casting
1.50 GCD available
1.50 Arcane Shot
2.35 Auto Shot
3.00 GCD available
3.00 Steady Shot
~4.30 Steady Shot finishes casting
4.7 Auto Shot

In perfect latency and reaction time you can do this with .35-.4s of wiggle room. Now let's add latency of .2s:
0.00 Auto Shot
0.2 Steady Shot
~1.50 Steady Shot finishes casting
1.70 GCD available
1.90 Arcane Shot
2.35 Auto Shot CLIPS by 0.05s
3.40 GCD available
3.60 Steady Shot
~4.90 Steady Shot finishes casting
5.40 Auto Shot CLIPS by 0.7s

So Wolfslayer is going to see large clipping even with a small amount of latency - the problem is the latency will accumulate across GCDs. In 2.3 this will probably be more feasible.

 

SomeRandomIdiot

Wow... based on suggestions from some people in this thread (Ugla specifically) I recently changed my spec from a normal 0/20/41 survival spec to a 0/28/33 hybrid with 5/5 Improved Arcane Shot and dropped multishot from my rotation. I now use:

/casesequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot

as my primary dps macro, and it has worked INCREDIBLY well. As a survival hunter in an Illidan killing guild, I'm used to being ~7-9 on the dps meters, and had rationalized that because my expose weakness debuff added enough raid dps to make up for my lack of personal dps. Upon changing the spec and shot rotation, I jumped from ~1000 dps to ~1400 (literally) almost bridging the gap between myself and our (incredibly skilled) BM hunter. I'm now placing #2-4 in dps on fights where I don't have other obligations such as trapping adds (Illidan, Shade, etc).

While I miss the benefits of TotH, Master Marksman, and Readiness, I can't argue with the incredible dps boost due to the consistency of the shot rotation. Anyone have any suggestions/critiques on how I could improve this even more?

P.S. I play with approximately 200 ping, and haven't noticed any issues with /castsequence.

 

binky

Have you sen any noticeable drop in EW? I'm assuming you had 5/5 MT in your previous build.

 

SomeRandomIdiot

re: Binky- No issues with expose weakness, but I'm running ~42% crit raid buffed, plus a possible feral druid. I never found master tactician that amazing in the first place- it was certainly better than improved hawk (due to needing to change shot rotations) but felt like overkill. The thing I miss the most by far is Thrill of the Hunt- that's a LOT of mana back. I've countered it by drinking more fel mana pots in raids, but I do tend to burn mana considerably faster than when I was running 2/3 Thrill of the Hunt. I wish I had WWS to illustrate but we're still setting that up.

 

MasterZeus

Personally, I think 3/3 Thrill of the Hunt is a little overrated. Yes, it is good, but putting those 3 points into something else would probably be better, especially if you could guarantee yourself a shadow priest. From last nights WWS (Wow Web Stats), I only gained 3.5k on Vashj (died to static charge right when phase 3 started), 2.3k on Mag, 1.9k on King Maulgar and 2k on Gruul. I could just use 1 or 2 more pots and have gained more.

BTW, ignore our Kael tries. That was the first time we ever engaged him, so, those are pretty worthless as we had no idea what we were doing.

 

Dibbler

3/3 TotH should not be dismissed as just a few mana pots. If you regen 2 mana pots worth then you could possibly use those cooldowns for health pots. As I typically am not gifted with a SPriest I find TotH a premium talent.

 

Wunlastri

So I am thinking of slightly switching up my spec. Is 100% EW crit proc really that different from 66%? Because if not, I was thinking of stuffing a 4th point into RWS.

 

Dibbler

My personal feeling is that if you have a crit % of 44% or more raid buffed then dropping to 2/3 exposed weakness should be perfectly fine (rough guess is the EW will be available 90% of the time using Cheeky's spread sheet).

 

Wunlastri

Hm, i'm at 32.5? unbuffed. Elixir of major agi, kings, wild mark. What other buffs increase crit?

 

Iod

+20 Agi food (Mudfish/Warp burger)

Not much you can do yourself aside from that. The rest would be determined by group and raid makeup (Feral Druid's Leader of the Pack, Judgement of Crusader from a Ret Pally, Grace of Air Totem from a Shaman)

That's all I can think of at the moment.

 

brutish

Scroll of Agility V. I don't know why I don't see more people using these. You can usually find them on the AH for cheap.

 

Needhamizer

The few times I've checked they haven't been there. The beauty of a low pop server.

 

binky

Depending on your reasoning for going SV, 90% may be (un)acceptable. I chose to make my raid buff the "priority" and not just a nice perk.

Personally, 90% is unacceptable. We've all been a part of 1%-2% wipes. That extra 10% of up time on EW may be enough to make the difference. Also, if you are going to expect the benefit of the "perfect" party to be in, I would think that it's not unreasonable of the RL to expect you bring the best raid buff. I may be a bit extreme in my commitment to maintaining and maximizing my raid buff, but it would drive me nuts to see 10% down time in EW. It bugs me enough to see it down the 1.78% (or so) that is down now

 

ghungadihn

Long time listener first time caller, lol.

I am considering speccing away from 41 in survival one to do more damage and two because now we are raiding with more pallys and am getting much more mana back than I am used to.

Wouldn't you get more dps out of going into barrage and keeping the same rotation with arcane and multi? Or, are you that much more efficient with the arcane rotation that it makes the difference? Also, how do you handle kill command, I have it into my macro?

 

Dibbler

I am all about helping the raid which is exactly why I moved over to Survival (I have to defend it over BM constantly). My point about the 2/3 vs 3/3 is when your crit rate gets at such a high rate your EW uptime is pretty much constant. You could essentially keep the same amount of EW uptime with 2/3 EW and put the points into RWS increasing your damage output as well.

The KEY point of Survival build that I often think is overlooked is that the Raid has to be DPS'ing the SAME mob as you. If your on Al'ar killing adds in phase 1 or 2, Vashj killing the spore bats or on Kael during phase 2 and 3, your adding ZERO or minimal raid buffs. However, you are increasing your damage output which has obvious benefits to the raid. That being said it becomes a real balancing act on talent point placement, much more so than BM and MM. I don't know the break point for Crit nor do I ever expect to get the perfect raid composition (Druids have been slacking of late) but I know I will look hard at changing my spec once I hit 38% crit without buffs.

 

MasterZeus

lol, me too! Anyway:

I thought so too, which is why I am currently specced that way. But, after going through my WWS parses, I see that I am using multishot very infrequently (~10% of my damage). Usually, it is because there are sheeped targets nearby, but other times it is because I just need to move so much that I restart my cast sequence. Since multi is my second special in the 1:1.5 rotation, it gets used less then arcane on fights where it is reset constantly.

This arcane rotation is big upgrade in DPS, especially for high armored targets, according to the spreadsheet. If you have a bow slow enough with good latency, I think it is pretty good. The highest DPS rotation that I found with the spreadsheet is this:

auto->SS->arcane->auto->multi->auto->SS->arcane->auto->steady

Basically, the normal 1:1.5, but using 2 arcanes as the specials and replacing 1 steady with a multi. That raises my DPS by about 100 over the standard 1:1.5 rotation. Unfortunately, with my lag, I think I need a 3.0 bow to pull it off and none has dropped yet.

I don't think there is room in a 1:1.5 rotation for kill command since it may delay your auto shot. I took it out of mine.

 

Alumatine

I'm another survival hunter that respeced to benefit the raid but is now looking to increase his personal DPS for hyjal without loosing that benefit. From reading a few of the posts above I've put together a spec that would compliment a 1:1.5 rotation with a 2.9-3.00 speed weapon using a castsequence macro.

Would it be possible to get some feedback from some more hardcore theory crafters? The idea is drawn from the idea that having a lesser cooldown on arcane shot would benefit more with a 1:1.5 (rather than my current 1:1 /inc multi) than MT procs. I would rather not loose TotH if I can help it since I'm required to take iHM over efficiency.

0.25.36 SV Build

 

MasterZeus

I am no pro yet, but 1/2 in Go For The Throat seems to be a bad idea. That talent is great if you have a true focus dump pet (why wouldn't you?). This is going to be my spec once I get a chance to respec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft.

I don't see a need for imp FD, but there really aren't many other choices that make much of a difference. I just prefer clever traps, but whatever you like.

 

Alumatine

I thought about it but I needed to weigh up how I actually raid. For starters my Crit is high enough for 1 point to be enough for my purposes... secondly my guild refuses to raid if I don't bring my turtle (sounds noob I know, I have my raid DPS pets but I'm not allowed to bring them -.-) so my pet damage isn't as import as other talents for my purposes.

 

Dibbler

LOL - I have a pet wolf that has a bad rep and I get raid kicked if I bring that pet in vs the other choices!!

 

SomeRandomIdiot

I think the key of an Arcane Shot only rotation is its simplicity. You have one macro to use, and that macro isn't terribly long. Taking barrage is unfortunately out of the question for me if I grab 5/5 imp arcane shot, as I would have to drop both points out of Go For the Throat. I use a bird because my tanks love the -attack power it provides to the bosses (stacks with shouts) and keeping the debuff up requires spamming the attack.

MasterZeus, your talent tree is the same as mine, except I have thrill of the hunt (nice, but not necessary- fel mana pots are amazing) for 3/5 ranged weapon spec, increasing all damage I do by 3%. Also, you definitely want 2/2 Go for the Throat instead of 2/2 Rapid Killing.

Why I don't use multishot: without points in improved arcane shot, arcane shot is a 6 second cooldown while multishot is a 10 second cooldown. This means if your macro is going to be less than 1 minute long, you aren't going to be able to take full advantage of both of them. Speccing 5/5 imp arcane shot reduces arcane to a 5 second cooldown.

Assuming .2 seconds of latency with a 2.9 speed bow reduced to 2.5 (actually 2.44, but close enough) from quiver.

Option 1 (no multishot):
0.0 Auto Shot Fires -
0.2 Steady Shot
1.7 Steady Shot Fires -
1.9 Arcane Shot
2.1 Arcane Shot Fires -
2.5 Auto Shot Fires -
2.7 Steady Shot
4.2 Steady Shot Fires -
5.0 Auto Shot Fires and sequence restarts

As you can see, this takes advantage of the synergy between the ~2.5 second cast of autoshot and the 5 second cooldown of arcane shot. 5 shots in 5 second: 2 Steady Shots, 2 Auto Shots, 1 Arcane Shot. For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume that these all do approximately the same damage (reference my WWS: Thoranir - WWS).

Option 2 (multishot) from MasterZeus:
0.0 Auto Shot Fires -
0.2 Steady Shot
1.7 Steady Shot Fires -
1.9 Arcane Shot
2.1 Arcane Shot Fires -
2.5 Auto Shot Fires -
2.7 Multishot
3.3 Multishot Fires -
5.0 Auto Shot Fires -
5.2 Steady Shot
6.7 Steady Shot Fires -
6.9 Arcane Shot
7.1 Arcane Shot Fires -
7.5 Auto Shot Fires -
7.8 Steady Shot
9.3 Steady Shot Fires -
10.0 Auto Shot Fires and sequence restarts

Here you have fired 10 shots in 10 seconds: compared to the previous rotation, you fired -1 Steady Shot +1 Multishot. If you have 3/3 barrage, your multishot will do (weapon damage normalized to 2.8 + 205) * 1.12 for 275 mana. Steady Shot will deal (ranged attack power * .3)+150 damage for 110 mana. In my experience these are about equal- it's only when you pick up imp barrage that multishot begins to outshine steady shot in terms of dps. Someone feel free to correct me on this and provide the math.

Assume for a second that multishot provides a (slight) damage upgrade over steady shot. This means that in a fight where you never move, the multishot rotation will do more dps. Raiding in BC through Illidan, however, I've found only a couple of these situations. Quite the opposite has been the case in fact- for fights like Supremus, Illidari Council, Illidan, Azgalor, Archimonde, etc, moving around to either avoid AOEs or get back into range of the boss is the rule, not the exception. The shorter shot rotation means you are less likely to wait on a cooldown to complete the macro, and aren't tied to staying still quite as much.

I want to emphasize I'm not a hardcore theorycrafter, just a hunter who's doing what he can to improve his dps, and hopefully help others out in the process. If you want to talk about this in an easier setting, I'm online on Thoranir most evenings, feel free to hop on Kel'Thuzad and yell at me. :P

 

MasterZeus

I agree. It is a great spec. The problem I have is illustrated below:

This isn't completely correct. You forgot a couple global cooldowns. The second steady cannot fire until (1.9+1.5+lag)3.4 at the earliest, not 2.7. Also, since you fire your last steady shot so late, you don't start another steady shot at 0.0 the second time through.

Granted, there aren't many times when you can sit there and go all out while repeating this sequence forever. Those times when you must move or stop DPSing is when your cooldowns catch back up.

There is definitely no arguing with your WWS. That is some impressive work. I will give imp arcane shot another try, but I think it will really shine once I get a 3.0 bow so I have more room for the global cooldowns.

I agree that barrage is a waste because of all the movement and CC making multishot not usable in too many places. The second rotation I posted is higher DPS if your multishot does more damage than your steady shot, but also because you are able to do a tiny bit less clipping. Since multishot takes 0.5 seconds to cast instead of 1.5 seconds, you can get that next auto off a little quicker and overlap the GCD with the 0.5 auto cast time.

BTW, fel mana pots on my server are 5 gold a pop when available, but they are almost never available.