You really need to put agi into every slot available. You get a 15% bonus to your agi, along with the 10% from blessing of kings. Few things will raise your personal DPS/Crit better than AGI. At lower levels of crit you just need to ensure you keep 3 points in EW. By socketing crit/ap over AGI you nerf yourself, you nerf your pet, and you nerf your EW debuff. Don't do it.
Gem +Agi where possible. (just ensure you have Meta requirements and your hit rating settled).
As Wyvern sting goes. I had more success with trapping(or in SSC/TK with kiting) far more. 26sec Frezze and 26sec keeps some troublesome mobs permanently freezed if their primary CC dies. Concussive Shot(to cover trap activation time)/Retrap. Also it gives me ability to have specific area permanently heavily entrapment-frosted myself (when second frost goes off, first is still up for 13 seconds). Hyall trash trembles (well when they see protection paladin, covered in frost).
Wyvern is too short term solution witch requires someone to tank mob after sleep is over. And shit usually hits the fan when one of tanks die, requiring second/third tank to take over. If Scorpid Sting would properly rewrite Wyvern Sting I would probably take it.
Counterattack no, just no. You counter, step away, unwary person near mob gets the pain. Low proc rate (5% - Deflection can be better spent on other talents) that works usually only when you use deterrence... and remember IF it can be Counterattacked it can be Frozen/Wing Clipped... 2 better solutions really. Frozen mob is CCed, Wing Cliped mob can be kited most of time and CCed this way.
And if you need to use Deterrence, then mob probably can't be trapped/counterattacked at all.
On fun factor. 8-12k hits (+dots) with explosive trap, and taunting rogues to keep up with your melee can be fun.
First of all this is my first time posting on these boards , I just had a few questions about survival dps. I just recently got into a guild who is clearing tk,ssc, and workin on hyal and bt. I have been raiding survival for a while, as i am not really a big fan of mm, and bm isnt my favorites of spec. I do sometimes switch to bm to see how my dmg increases. I have not seen a big jump in numbers when I spec bm then when im survival. I spec 5/20/36, imp aspect of the hawk, 3/3 expose weakness and thrill of the hunt. For my numbers im also going to be using a Hydross kill. I managed to keep 934dps for 9minutes.
My questions were, 1: What theoritacly(i probably spelled tha wrong) is the best survival dps spec? When should you stop stacking agi? I have 847unbuffed with 2080ap, 35percent crit. Is there going to be a new 2.3 survival raiding guide? Should I loose some agi/crit to gain more ap? I am wearing 2vengefull pieces that I can replace with t5 shoulders and chest from ssc.
I dont know what else, i'll try and think and make another post but thanks for reading
Just wait until the sleep ends to apply Scorpid, it should work.
I haven't tested what Trohck said, but assuming it works I doubt it would make Wyvern Sting much more useful.
The purpose of using sleep in a raid would generally be so that it can be CC'd by a more reliable CC (ice trap) shortly after. Unless the hunter has aggro on the mob (which one distracting shot may or may not be enough for) then dropping the ice trap and then waiting for sleep to end before applying scorpid sting won't really be effective.
It's not usually going to be a planned and viable means of CC. It can be nice for emergencies, but I'm a strong believer that individuals should spec for boss fights, not for trash. The boss encounters where you might find a use for Wyvern Sting are few and far between.
It's a PvP ability in my opinion, or a Heroic/10 man ability at best.
Wyvern Sting is mostly a PvP ability (and it's not even a very good PvP ability, mostly due to the very large cooldown). I've used it with limited success during raids - typically Wyvern->Scorpid->Freezing Trap.
On a related note I'd point out that most raids spend 50%+ of their time on trash, so optimizing for trash isn't necessarily a bad idea, so long as you can kill the bosses.
Thanks for the feedback, it is greatly appreciated.
Taking Hamaa's point, I was not suggesting that it be used as a regular CC method, just in emergency cases. Quite a few of us are still regulars to the 10 man/heroic scene, especially with the appearance of ZA, so don't count that out just yet.
On a unrelated note, i've been trying to work out my shot rotation macro but not having much luck. Based on cheeky's spreadsheet i've been trying to create a macro for a 1:1 (priority) arcane/multi rotation but somehow I just cant seem to make it work... i'm really not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is this shot rotation just not workable or is it that I should go arcane/steady instead? I would really appreciate anyone that can point me in the right direction.
Last edited by Talrunya : 12/18/07 at 5:59 PM.
Reason: Grammar
Wyvern Sting is mostly a PvP ability (and it's not even a very good PvP ability, mostly due to the very large cooldown). I've used it with limited success during raids - typically Wyvern->Scorpid->Freezing Trap.
On a related note I'd point out that most raids spend 50%+ of their time on trash, so optimizing for trash isn't necessarily a bad idea, so long as you can kill the bosses.
The trash will die no matter what. There are very few cases (VR) where the trash can be considered harder than the boss. Rarely will you see a guild wiping on trash over and over, and eventually trading in different raid members or sending people out to respec in order to best suit the trash. Even in hyjal where the trash is more than 70%? of the encounter, the trash still dies easily enough that you are unlikely to need anybody that specs into a "trash" build rather than a "boss" build.
The ammount of time you spend on trash is only more than that spent on a boss when the boss is on farm status. At that point, all of this becomes a moot point. Many guilds could clear all of the trash in any given instance in 100% PvP specs, but they could not clear those bosses in the same specs. Spec for bosses, or spec for failure.
Minor adjustments that have a big impact on Hyjal trash might be understandable, but at the end of the day, it's the purples you want, and for that you need to kill bosses. (Yes I know there is trash loot, but let's not entertain that silly argument please.)
Even if you're working on a lot of new bosses, you will have to reclear trash. Having some talents aimed at trash in your spec can still be good. Clearing trash may be easy to do without wipes, but doing it faster will inevitably give you more time to work on a new boss. Even if you wipe an extra time or two because you are not the absolute optimal boss-killing spec, you might spend less total time getting your first kill because you saved time clearing trash.
All I'm saying is there is a balance to be struck. You shouldn't take exclusively boss talents and ignore trash talents, since the majority of your time will be spend "farming" whether you're clearing Karazhan or Black Temple. Likewise, your spec shouldn't be solely aimed at trash clearing. Fortunately, many talents cover both cases well.
Thanks for the feedback, it is greatly appreciated.
Taking Hamaa's point, I was not suggesting that it be used as a regular CC method, just in emergency cases. Quite a few of us are still regulars to the 10 man/heroic scene, especially with the appearance of ZA, so don't count that out just yet.
On a unrelated note, i've been trying to work out my shot rotation macro but not having much luck. Based on cheeky's spreadsheet i've been trying to create a macro for a 1:1 (priority) arcane/multi rotation but somehow I just cant seem to make it work... i'm really not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is this shot rotation just not workable or is it that I should go arcane/steady instead? I would really appreciate anyone that can point me in the right direction.
I would still disagree that it's useful in 10 mans (I run ZA twice a week and can't imagine when I'd use it) but my group is fairly optomized so there are rarely loose mobs that I might use it on. To each their own. ;-)
As for the shot rotation macro... Aren't you survival? If you are then I suspect you should be using a 1:1.5 shot rotation. I can't look at your armory from work, but with a fast weapon and some haste gear/procs you could get down to a 1:1 rotation I suppose. It's probably not worth it but, again, to each their own.
A good 1:1 rotation that includes arcane.
#showtooltip Steady Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/castsequence reset=6 Auto Shot, Arcane Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Multi is dangerous on trash because of CC, and takes a bit more work to macro because of the CD. I'd suggest either learning to weave it in manually or simply not using it until you feel comfortable weaving it manually. Ideally it will take the place of one of your steady shots. Personally, I like to spam buttons. It's a bad habit of mine. For that reason I created a macro like this.
#showtooltip Multi-Shot
/castsequence reset=10 Auto Shot, Multi-Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear() <<<< This line may or may not be needed.
I can spam this button mid Steady Shot to ensure that my multi-shot fires without clipping an auto shot.
My original sequence was -
/castsequence reset=10 auto shot, arcane shot, auto shot, multi shot, auto shot, steady shot, auto shot, arcane shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] kill command
The rotation I was trying to capture was -
auto, arcane, auto, multi, auto, steady, auto, arcane, auto, steady, auto, steady, [repeat]
Dont know what was happening, think it was clipping an auto shot or something.
Yes I am survival, and based on the reading here I should be using a 1:1.5, but working the shot rotations in Cheeky's spreadsheet I see an ~50 dps increase with 1:1 over 1:1.5. I'm not sure where(if) the bug is here but I did notice with the 1:1 rotation my auto shot was 2.35 as opposed to 3.15 with a 1:1.5 rotation. I'm new to macros so i'm not sure how much that has to do with it, but I gather 2.35 is what my auto shot should be as I'm using the Wolfslayer with the +15% attack speed ammo pouch.
Button smashing... been loving it since day 1; but as I read more of the forums I see hunters getting over 1kdps while the best I've been able to get is ~800dps. My gear isn't all that bad, and I know Cheeky's spreadsheet incorporates a lot of theoretical stuff, but I do feel that I should be able to get that extra 100 dps at least and macros seems to be the only thing I'm missing.
My original sequence was -
/castsequence reset=10 auto shot, arcane shot, auto shot, multi shot, auto shot, steady shot, auto shot, arcane shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] kill command
The rotation I was trying to capture was -
auto, arcane, auto, multi, auto, steady, auto, arcane, auto, steady, auto, steady, [repeat]
Dont know what was happening, think it was clipping an auto shot or something.
Yes I am survival, and based on the reading here I should be using a 1:1.5, but working the shot rotations in Cheeky's spreadsheet I see an ~50 dps increase with 1:1 over 1:1.5. I'm not sure where(if) the bug is here but I did notice with the 1:1 rotation my auto shot was 2.35 as opposed to 3.15 with a 1:1.5 rotation. I'm new to macros so i'm not sure how much that has to do with it, but I gather 2.35 is what my auto shot should be as I'm using the Wolfslayer with the +15% attack speed ammo pouch.
Button smashing... been loving it since day 1; but as I read more of the forums I see hunters getting over 1kdps while the best I've been able to get is ~800dps. My gear isn't all that bad, and I know Cheeky's spreadsheet incorporates a lot of theoretical stuff, but I do feel that I should be able to get that extra 100 dps at least and macros seems to be the only thing I'm missing.
Get 2.9+ speed weapon for survival. Heroic SV bow could be a good start. The main reason you see a drop in dps is the weapon speed. And get truestrike ring from ah to replace the arathig warlords ring
/castsequence reset=3 auto shot, steady shot, multi-shot, auto shot, steady shot, auto shot, steady shot, arcane shot, auto shot, steady shot
Does a macro so long really not clip shots? In my experience I've seen longer macros result in clips. This could be due to the fact that I only seem to get fast weapons.
Get 2.9+ speed weapon for survival. Heroic SV bow could be a good start. The main reason you see a drop in dps is the weapon speed. And get truestrike ring from ah to replace the arathig warlords ring
/castsequence reset = 3 auto shot, steady shot, multi-shot, auto shot, steady shot, auto shot, steady shot, arcane shot, auto shot, steady shot
no kill command
First,
"reset = 3"
is not the same as
"reset=3"
and to my knowledge it will not work.
Second, will that macro even function properly with a reset of 3? You need at least a reset of 10 for multi-shot and if you insist on having multi-shot and arcane on the same macro then I'd advise a reset of 12 and weaving two arcane's into the one macro, but this will delay your multi shot by 1.5 seconds each rotation.
Last, even for an SV hunter (using What of Havoc from Cheeky's Spreadsheet as the baseline) the kill comand ability alone still provides ~80 theoretical DPS. Is there really any benefit to not using this ability?
I'm not out to flame or troll anybody, but there are more than enough "huntards" in the game. The last thing we need is young hunters coming to EJ forums for advice, and walking away with information that is less than accurate.
Edit: It's worth mentioning that Gruknok is absolutely correct about the 2.9 speed weapon. Get a slower weapon (Heroic SV, Exalted Thrallmar, Attumen, ZA) and use a 1:1.5 shot rotation and you should see a DPS boost.
Arsenal seems to be buggy these days for European characters. Sapa, would you mind posting your specc by using some kind of talent calculator? Thanks in advance.
Man this thread is getting long and it's really hard to read through all of it in one sitting and walk away with any useful information. I have been trying to read it in small burst when I have a moment at work or before raids, and I have been unsuccessful. What is typically the procedure for tanking such a long thread that has potentially every bit of information needed and starting a new thread with the the key points summarized?
I ask because I think it's about time.
Anyway, I am trying to gleam what I can as I can since I am considering switching to Survival for the raid benefit it potentially brings or what it theoretically brings from what I have read so far.
Get 2.9+ speed weapon for survival. Heroic SV bow could be a good start. The main reason you see a drop in dps is the weapon speed. And get truestrike ring from ah to replace the arathig warlords ring
/castsequence reset = 3 auto shot, steady shot, multi-shot, auto shot, steady shot, auto shot, steady shot, arcane shot, auto shot, steady shot
no kill command
It's not really a good idea to include Multi-Shot in a long shot rotation macro. Why?
"Oops, my Multi-Shot broke that sheep."
"Oops, I pulled aggro on some of Morogrim's Murlocs."
etc.
Any situation where you have the potential to shoot multiple mobs and don't have complete control over when Multi-Shot does or doesn't fire is a bad situation.
Second, will that macro even function properly with a reset of 3? You need at least a reset of 10 for multi-shot and if you insist on having multi-shot and arcane on the same macro then I'd advise a reset of 12 and weaving two arcane's into the one macro, but this will delay your multi shot by 1.5 seconds each rotation.
Last, even for an SV hunter (using What of Havoc from Cheeky's Spreadsheet as the baseline) the kill comand ability alone still provides ~80 theoretical DPS. Is there really any benefit to not using this ability?
I'm not out to flame or troll anybody, but there are more than enough "huntards" in the game. The last thing we need is young hunters coming to EJ forums for advice, and walking away with information that is less than accurate.
Edit: It's worth mentioning that Gruknok is absolutely correct about the 2.9 speed weapon. Get a slower weapon (Heroic SV, Exalted Thrallmar, Attumen, ZA) and use a 1:1.5 shot rotation and you should see a DPS boost.
Well ive been raiding as survival for about half a year now and been using the macro for more than 2 momths i believe. And been playing hunter for about 1.5 year so i wouldnt call myself young hunter. Im not raiding atm because of stuff in real life so my armory will just show pvp talents for 2v2 with rogue and pve gear socketed with resilience gems.
not sure about the spaces in reset=3, wrote the macro not pasted it so it might be good to change it to reset=3. but i dont believe spaces can change anything other than the character count in the macro.
3 has nothing to do with the lenght of the macro. Never had any problems with arcane or multi beeing on cooldown after stoping the spam to move or do something else.
After feign, mend or scorpid sting you still need to manualy finish the sequence, if you dont want the global cooldown and the macro to mess up the rotation and while manualy doing the rest of the shots the macro resets and when multishot is reached in the sequence its up again.
The closest what can happen is:
|--------------macroed----------------| |-------------------------manual-------------------
auto->steady->multi->auto->steady->mend(or what ever is needed)->auto->steady-
-----------------------||----------------------------macro--------------------------...
>arcane->auto->steady->auto->steady->multi(ready just before its needed)...
Multi is ready because 3 delayed autoshot swings passed + 1 steady shot cast till the multi is needed to be up again.
Kill command has very low DPM for Survival hunters and especialy MM and in my oppinion isnt worth using unless its in the BM macro which i use when rapid fire or bloodlust is up. In the 1:1.5 rotation it will most likely will cause even higher autoshot clipping. So the theoretical KC dps is just traded for autoshot DPS.
It's not really a good idea to include Multi-Shot in a long shot rotation macro. Why?
"Oops, my Multi-Shot broke that sheep."
"Oops, I pulled aggro on some of Morogrim's Murlocs."
etc.
Any situation where you have the potential to shoot multiple mobs and don't have complete control over when Multi-Shot does or doesn't fire is a bad situation.
Morogrim is only 1 of the encounters till t6 content (never done anything above kael) where multishot can cause trouble even on morogrim you can simply stand at the frost nova point and it wont make much sence anyway. The agro will be taken by aoe nearly instantly after the murlocs reach you. The rest of such encounters that i dont know of most likely are very rare and i doubt that theres a reason to do manual rotations in the rest of the fights.
Ofc you dont want to use the macro on trash but who cares about dps there.
This way you get the Kill Command if it's up during your smashing as well? I don't use a /castsequence macro for my rotation I manually weave in the Arcane and Multi Shots... but I never considering making a macro like you did. Anyways, made me think these would be even better for my case.
Gurk and Kamaa... I have the wrathtide (heroic SV) bow in my bank. I had been messing with Cheeky's spreadsheet and saw some weird results on the shot rotations, well weird to me as I couldn't quite figure how a lower rated weapon gave me more dps. I've since dug through the forums and found some clarification on that (thanks again Cheeky) so i'll rework that back into my gear until I can get something from ZA/TK or by some miracle get Prince to drop that stupid bow. The arena bow looks like a good option as well, so I'll keep my eyes on that as an alternative as well.
Who cares about dps on trash... exactly, I dont. Trash are usually dead before you can pop a trinket most times so for me there is nothing wrong with button smashing at that point. What I'm really looking for is to get max dps on a boss so they go down faster. Nothing frustrates me more than getting them to 1-2% and then wipe because we just couldn't get the extra dps out. I can't help but think that if I could have gotten that extra 100-200 extra dps on him for the entire fight then it would be screenshot time, not run back and do it again time.
Working the 1.15 shot rotation without multi looks fine, a lot smoother with less clipping (it seems). I can't ignore the value of a good multi-shot though as its single target damage is still significantly higher than a steady shot. Working up a shot rotation without multi-shot I got -
/castsequence reset=6 auto shot, steady shot, arcane shot, auto shot, steady shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] kill command
If thats wrong please let me know. I'd love to have it working for tonight as we're supposed to be hitting a 25man.
If Kill command does not affect the gcd why would it cause auto shot clipping?
and /castsequence reset=3 auto shot, steady shot, arcane shot, auto shot, steady shot
It has lower cliping on mediocre latency is abit more mana efficient than with multi rank 6 and isnt that complicated.
But It requires curse of shadows to be viable. And doesnt have the ability to be downranked for extra mana efficiency like you could do with multi rank 1.
Just leave the imp arcane shot talents not spend and go to dr boom. And spam the macro. You should notice that when you should shoot arcane its not ready. Put talents in imp arcane shot one by one till you lower the cooldown of arcane shot to a propper lvl.
Thats with 672 penetration. So if you have much less or 0 the arcane build should work fine.
In practice you wont notice the diference because its much easier to manage so the 10 dps most likely come back with a bonus once you do everything properly, when paying more attenction on the fight rather than rotation.
About the kill command ive noticed reports of it clipping autoshots and experience strange anomalies myself, Mostly when pet is moving i think. Gonna test it again tonight but still it has very low DPM and high miss chance.
I give up. Yes your macro is wrong. I've already provided you with the macro you're asking for. KC does not effect the GCD and for the most part it will not clip your auto shots if you use the macro I posted above. Gruk has been playing his hunter for a long time. For that he should get a cookie. Unfortunately it would seem a majority of his experience comes from before TBC. He can safely be ignored. You're a survival hunter and will therefore crit more than most of us. Use KC at every opportunity unless you are OOM.
Koroishya,
I don't really use arcane shots anymore unless I'm on the run so I wouldn't use that macro, but there is certainly no harm in adding KC to either of the macros.
I give up. Yes your macro is wrong. I've already provided you with the macro you're asking for. KC does not effect the GCD and for the most part it will not clip your auto shots if you use the macro I posted above. Gruk has been playing his hunter for a long time. For that he should get a cookie. Unfortunately it would seem a majority of his experience comes from before TBC. He can safely be ignored. You're a survival hunter and will therefore crit more than most of us. Use KC at every opportunity unless you are OOM.
Koroishya,
I don't really use arcane shots anymore unless I'm on the run so I wouldn't use that macro, but there is certainly no harm in adding KC to either of the macros.
Orly? Your experience in TBC as hunter isnt that great either. couple thousands rep with t6 factions and you think youve gone through everything?
KC has much lower dpm than any of the shots, it has low crit rate, it has high miss rate, it doesnt triger toth, expose, gftt. There are much better ways than KC to spend the mana as survival.
And yes my macro is wrong because of reset=3 with spaces. The rest of it works just fine.
GoA (non improved), BoM (5/5), BoK, LotP, Agi Elixir, Mageblood Elixir, Mana Oil, Warp Burger.
5x Sunder, FF, CoR, CoS, my HM, my EW
No KC (unrealistic to use in 1:1.5)
With 7700 custom target instead Rage Winterchill DPS drops to 1866.
PS. Lurker is a Beast, Trolls +5% damage... (not sure if its in spreadsheet?)
12/18/07, 12:16 PM
, I just had a few questions about survival dps. I just recently got into a guild who is clearing tk,ssc, and workin on hyal and bt. I have been raiding survival for a while, as i am not really a big fan of mm, and bm isnt my favorites of spec. I do sometimes switch to bm to see how my dmg increases. I have not seen a big jump in numbers when I spec bm then when im survival. I spec 5/20/36, imp aspect of the hawk, 3/3 expose weakness and thrill of the hunt. For my numbers im also going to be using a Hydross kill. I managed to keep 934dps for 9minutes. 
Similar Threads
