Attack rolls are one roll. Miss, hit, crit are all in one roll. So miss has nothing to do with your chance to crit a shot.

See Attack table - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft for more information.

Ack. Never mind. I need to drink coffee before I post.

I've been using Cheeky's spreadsheet for a while now, but as I get into end game territory I find myself really confused about how to put together the ideal gear set. Things that look like upgrades from one item to the other, aren't always upgrades, until you get another piece of gear that changes something else that then makes the first item, in fact, an upgrade once again. For example, I have at home a list of 'ideal gear' that includes T5 chest. On the spread sheet, it increases my dps from the Ranger Generals. But, given that I don't have the other gear yet from that set up, right now, that chest piece is a decrease in dps for me. >.<

It's making my head hurt. I like to play to the best of my ability, and do want to put the effort into making sure I am researching the best options, but all the flipping in and out, with different gems and different that runs me into circles.

I was hoping that I could get a few end game raiders (BT/Hyjal complete) folks could just raise their hands and post here, or in pm, so I can check out your armory links and talents and what not. And, if you wanted to be so extra kind as to look at my own current set up and tell me where I need to make changes, that'd be even better! Mostly, I am trying to figure out what ranged weapon I should be aiming for, and what to do with my shot rotation. Before 2.3 I was set very well rotation wise with the 1:1.5 (ImpArcane) and I am still trying to resolve the issues with that. (I keep getting arcanes sneaking in between the steady-arcane portion every 2-3 rounds).

Thanks!

Feel free to check out my armory, I love my talent spec at the moment (although it's definitely a bit more frustrating since 2.3 messed with rotations). I'm 5/5 imp arcane shot, my current macro is /castsequence !Auto Shot, Steady Shot(Rank 1), Arcane Shot(Rank 9), !Auto Shot, Steady Shot(Rank 1). I try to strike a balance between pure agility for the raid buff and personal dps, since I believe that not only should a survival hunter benefit the raid though their expose weakness, but that they should also carry their weight dpswise as well. I've also chosen to drop Thrill of the Hunt to instead grab 3/5 Ranged Weapon Specialization, because while I can always drink more and/or better mana potions, there's nothing I can do consumable-wise to provide me with 3% more ranged damage.

You'll find my WWS at Wow Web Stats

If you're looking for a max dps, I think my best Gorefiend dps (he's by far the best baseline for BT/Hyjal dps comparisons) is Wow Web Stats with 1793 dps. Group was Feral Druid, Resto Shaman, BM Hunter, Me (Survival Hunter), and someone else who didn't give me any buffs.

I'm essentially done with gear now, so what you're looking at is close to what I'd ideally like to enter sunwell in. Only upgrade for me still is Madness of the Betrayer, and considering our droprate on it... you get the picture.

As far as the issue with the shot rotation macros now, I find that sometimes an auto shot sneaks in before my arcane shot forcing me to wait another auto shot cooldown before my macro continues. In these instances, I throw in a multishot, which'll fit perfectly while you wait for the auto shot cooldown to come up. To illustrate:

Normal Rotation: Auto Steady Arcane Auto Steady Auto Steady Arcane Auto Steady etc
Problem Rotation: Auto Steady Arcane Auto Steady Auto Steady Auto Arcane .............. Auto Steady etc
becomes: Auto Steady Arcane Auto Steady Auto Steady Auto Arcane **Multi** Auto Steady etc

It's not quite as efficient as the pure 5 shot rotation, but it's a simple fix. On the rare instances where it happens twice in a row so multishot is still on cooldown, I'll usually take the time to throw out a scorpid sting to refresh it, or perhaps a mend pet, etc. Feel free to fit anything you choose in those rare moments, but fortunately they don't happen too often.

I'll take a look at your gear when I get the chance (at work currently) but for now, I hope this helps!

Edit: Doesn't look like I logged out in dps trinkets, I currently use Berserker's Call from Zul'jin and Hourglass of the Unraveler from Black Morass.

This is true, but not the full story.

It is true that EW procs off a crit and that you cannot crit if you miss the target (mutually exclusive conditions) and that missing has some effect on the average EW proc. However, the rest of the story is the effect of missing shots on EW is very small since you do not have to crit and hit every shot to keep the proc up. You only need to crit one shot every 7 seconds to keep it up. Assuming a 2.9 speed range weapon and no haste effect beyond the quiver/ammo pouch and a 1:5 rotation, shots per second is 0.92. Thus in 7 seconds, 6.44 shots can occur. Only one of these need to be a crit to keep EW up. Theoretically, you could have 100% crit rate and a 17% hit rate and still keep EW up.

Being hit capped is still very important though since it affects your DPS.

If you are way below the hit cap, adding in HR items, even if they slightly inferior DPS items if you didn't have to worry about HR, usually result in an increase in DPS since the increased DPS by missing less makes up for the decreased DPS from hitting for less on each shot on average. However, once you get within a few points under the cap and your miss chance is very low, you can start see that the better DPS items win over adding more HR.

As an illustration, my hunter currently raids at one point below the hit cap, providing a 99.96% hit chance, which is sufficient. I have 1278.27 DPS and average EW proc of 285.27 with a fully raid buffed crit rate of 51.91% with abother 3.63% on average from Master Tactician. Now as a basis to illustrate the effect of HR, if I replace my [Necklace of the Deep] with [Saberclaw Talisman], my [Vengeful Gladiator's Chain Helm] with [Rift Stalker Helm] (which I do not have) and replace 4 [Delicate Living Ruby] (+8 agi) in a gem locations that do not provide any DPS socket bonus each with a [Glinting Noble Topaz] (+4 agi and +4 hit), my HR is capped with 1261.51 DPS and 274.18 average EW proc. The DPS and EW proc loss here is because I gave up better DPS and agi items and gems for lesser items, while roughly maintaining HR. This was done mostly to setup for the illustration of hit rating.

Now let me replace one [Glinting Noble Topaz] with a [Shifting Nightseye] (+4 agi and +6 sta) so that nothing changes DPS wise except for my HR (agi is constant). My new hit chance is 99.77% with 1260.06 DPS (-1.45) and 274.18 average EW proc (-0.00). As can be seen, the loss of the first 4 HR has very little impact on my DPS and average EW proc.

But I have 3 more [Glinting Noble Topaz] that I can replace with a [Shifting Nightseye] to further illustrate. I can illustrate further but just subtracting 4HR from my stats. This data is (with including the first -4 HR):

-0 HR: 100.00% with 1261.51 DPS and 274.18 average EW proc
-4 HR: 99.77% with 1260.06 DPS (-1.45) and 274.18 average EW proc (-0.00).
-8 HR: 99.52% with 1258.44 DPS (-3.07, -1.62 more) and 274.17 average EW proc (-0.01).
-12 HR: 99.27% with 1256.81 DPS (-4.70, -1.63 more) and 274.17 average EW proc (-0.01, -0.00 more).
-16 HR: 99.01% with 1255.18 DPS (-6.33, -1.63 more) and 274.17 average EW proc (-0.01, -0.00 more).
-20 HR: 98.86% with 1253.56 DPS (-8.05, -1.62 more) and 274.16 average EW proc (-0.02, -0.01 more).
-24 HR: 98.51% with 1251.93 DPS (-9.58, -1.53 more) and 274.16 average EW proc (-0.02, -0.00 more).
-28 HR: 98.25% with 1250.30 DPS (-11.21, -1.63 more) and 274.16 average EW proc (-0.02, -0.00 more).
-32 HR: 98.00% with 1248.67 DPS (-12.84, -1.63 more) and 274.15 average EW proc (-0.03, -0.01 more).
-36 HR: 97.74% with 1247.05 DPS (-14.46, -1.62 more) and 274.15 average EW proc (-0.03, -0.00 more).

(stopping here since no reason to be 40 or more HR below cap IMO)

As can be seen, losing the first 4 or so HR from the cap has less effect that lossing more HR. After the first couple HR loss, the DPS loss per single point of HR loss is a constant slope of about -0.4 with my character (may be different on others). However, the loss of HR on my EW proc is minimal. Even after a loss of 36 HR, the loss of average EW proc is only 0.03, a -0.01% change. This is not even noticeable. Of course, these numbers are dependent on my relatively high crit rate. With lower crit rates, the effect of missing shots is a little larger on your average EW proc, but still not significant for a standard crit rating for what a survival hunter should have for entering 25-man raid instances. Even if I totally cancel all my HR (-95) to have a 94% hit chance, the impact on my EW proc is only -0.06.

Now to go back to the original question, agility is definitely more important than hit since it increases your crit rating, AP, armor, dodge %, and average EW proc, but you shouldn't neglect your HR either and should still try to keep it at or near the cap. It is fine though to go a few points below the cap if it helps you to add better gear that improves your personal DPS or average EW proc.

For anyone wondering why Expose Weakness changed at all based on hit rating, it's because Master Tactician is effected by hit %, and that influences your effective crit rate. The changes are very, very minor, as can be seen from Whitefyst's numbers.

so i recently started using the */cast !Auto Shot /cast steady shot* macro, i have found it to be very good.

im a survival hunter and using this instead of my auto, steady, arcane, multi, rotation has improved my dps

i was reading a thread aboout agi gem vs ap gems for BM hunter for a friend, and i saw something that interested me.

someone posted about the way base weapon and ammo dmg in calculated and that the 12 dmg scope can also crit.

as a surv hunter i got 38.15% crit unbuffed and 2268 ap with AOTH .. ofc i have the 28CR scope atm. useing the 3.0 speed bow of archimond. 0 / 20 / 41 spec .. down to 5/5 MT. armory Nosleep on ghostlands eu relm if my gear and or spec is what make a difference in all of this.

my question is this....

with my crit lvl (or any crit lvl tbh ) what is better? 28 crit scope or 12 dmg scope?

i cant decide if the 28 crit scope is giving me more dps than the 12 dmg scope would. considering my exposed weakness is up 100% even without raid buffs, then my crit % for the basis of keeping my exposed weakness up is not an issue.

my thinking is this.. does 12 dmg scope effect all shots?.. and if not, what is not effected?

would the extra dmg per shot (including that the scope dmg can also crit ) = more dps than the 28 CR scope?

would it be better to use the crit scope with the *!auto shot* macro but better to use the 12 dmg scope with the full multi, arcane, steady rotation?

bascially im a maths noob when it comes to this stuff and would love any input by ppl who can or have done the maths :P

ty in advance

To fix problem edit your macro to
/castsequence !Auto Shot, Steady Shot(Rank 1), Arcane Shot(Rank 9), Steady Shot(Rank 1)

Auto shot will happen anyway after arcane with this sequence, but macro will not wait if it happens at wrong time.

By punching in insane values in the DPS spreadsheet hand-adjust area, I've found the point in crit% where the [Schematic: Khorium Scope] outperforms the [Schematic: Stabilized Eternium Scope] is when your crit rate is at about 95%. This is when using a Priority rotation, so Multi-Shot is included. (Base 41/20/0 build, T5 gearing level - minus the extra 1469 crit rating.) I don't think a full Survival build with a 1:1.5 rotation will see a huge difference.

Always, always use the +crit scope for PvE. (The point of inflection for PvP depends heavily upon the target resilience.)

haha 95% , ok cool :P

tyvm for ur help dude

ile stick to what i got then :P

Thanks! That was just what I was looking for. I have almost the same spec as you actually So yay there. I'll try your macro and see if I get that slipped up auto less. On the Teron fight, I was looking at your log file and it looked like you were doing more of a steady auto rotation with arcanes just thrown in on occasion. Is that typical, or was that just situational for that night? Also, my shots hit for so much less on average - but my group make up typically ends me up with a spriest, a few warlocks, MAYBE the BM hunter. I never get in druid group.

What do you use to keep your mana up? I just went to dual wielding (Blade of Infamy and Netherbane) so I could do dual mana oils. I use Fel Mana potions too, but I still run out of mana quite a bit if I have no spriest.

I'm going to stare at your armory some more and jot down what you have where. It looks like the same stuff I had on my 'ideal' list. And I was going after Bristleblitz as my upgrade to Sunfury, so woot.

Thanks again! <3

In my opinion, the two best group members for a Survival hunter are:
1) A druid with LotP: The extra 5% crit not only helps your personal DPS but also all your abilities that trigger from crit, namely your EW but also your TotH, if you have it, Kill Command, etc.
2) A shammy (preferrably enhancement) with Mana Spring, GoA, and SoE. The 30 mp5 from Mana Spring is a comparable regen to what you get from a shadow priest, but the shammy's other totems really help your personal DPS and your overall raid contribution. A fully ranked GoA, provides you with 88 agi base or 111.3 after LR and BoK. This is +111.3 AP and 2.78% crit to you and 25.5 AP to your pet, without factoring in the benefits from EW. For a good overall crit rate and EW uptime, this is also an additional about 27.8 AP average on EW proc. The SoE, when fully ranked, provides 98 strength to your pet, which equates to around 215 AP for your pet.

Now there are others that could be added to the group to help a Survival hunter even more, but that usually doesn't happen since this type of group is ideal to get the rogues into, but if we only have a single rogue on, then a BM hunter gets added into the group to get the benefits and to also add to the groups DPS with FI.

So with that group make up, here is the mana regen I receive:
- BoW for 41 to 49 mp5 depending on whether it is improved or not
- 2 mana oils - one on each weapon - for 24-28 mp5
- mana spring totem for 30 mp5
- mageblood potion for 12-16 mp5 for my guardian potion (unless on a learning fight, in which case I flask so I do not have to redo pots after each death, I use Elixer of Major Agility as battle elixer)
- mana pots, preferrably fel mana but super mana if none available

That totals to 107-123 mp5, plus whatever mana is received from the mana pots.

Other items that help mana regen:
- mana talents: I do not have Efficiency since I place the ranks in IHM instead to provide the 110 AP for the melee as well as us hunters and since TotH is much more effective and talent point efficient at high crit levels. 5/5 in Efficiency only provides 10% mana savings while the 2/3 I have in TotH provides 13.7%. Of course, if you do not need or want IHM, might as well put the points in Efficiency.
- Judgement of Wisdom if you can get a pally to do it, although it usually is not a priority (at least not in our raids)
- AoV - obviously if mana is getting low, it is better to switch aspects and lose that 155 AP than to go OOM. I often use AoV in certain easier phases of fights, such as Vashj phase 1, to try to maintain a high mana pool in preparation for the more difficult phases in which I need to be at maximum DPS.
- Downgrading rotations: I usually raid with a 1:5 rotation, which uses tons of mana. If mana is getting tight despite everything else, I can downgrade to a 1:3 rotation and still do decent DPS while not using as much mana. Finally, if the mana situation gets desperate, which it usually doesn't, I can always fall back to a 1:1 rotation until I can pot.

Yeah, I dream at night of perfect hunter groups, but it'll never happen. Hunters are tools to boost other folks dps, not dps that should be getting boosts. At least, that's how it feels. I r pawn.

We have a mage group that is 3-4 mages, spriest and elemental shaman.
Phys group that gets the BM hunter which is the feral druid, rogues, dps warrior and enhancement shaman.
Tank group gets other phys. dps guys and maybe a tree druid.
Surv hunter gets healing paladins, warlocks, mages that didn't fit into the mage group, etc. Basically the left over pool. Unless we have a 2nd spriest, I usually end up in a group that gives me nothing, and I give nothing back to in return so I do what I can to keep up.

Could that also be why my average shot damage is lower? Lack of crit and lack of BM damage bonus, GOA, etc?

Hello

I've been trying to up my dps as SV, but i can't seem to fix it, anyone know what i might be doing wrong? gear wise, i use the 1.1.5 rotation.

Thanks

Infiltrator Ysera

At the least, we'd need a fair sample of WWSes and an armory to answer this question.

Here at Elitist Jerks, one of the requirements is that you speak in complete sentences, properly punctuated and capitalized. It helps us preserve a civil and competent atmosphere. That would be why you received an infraction.

And, to keep myself on topic, regarding lockebelmont, it's almost impossible for us to determine what you're doing wrong unless you provide us with some sort of parser results or wow web stats. Your gear, gems, and spec seem reasonable, so I'm going to presume your shot rotation is what is hurting your dps. Please describe your rotation if you could, perhaps providing a macro that you are using?

Yes, sorry - meant 5 Steady Shots in 8 seconds.

As far as uptime goes, I'm not 100% confident in my probability/statistics, so I wrote a quick computer simulation, must have been flawed.

Regardless, 153 average AP is still equal to or better than most trinkets.

Heh, wrote that last reply without even noticing page 36 somehow. So some of the stuff I replied to already was answered. However, I find the comment about Master Tactician's effect on Expose Weakness, albeit a minor one, interesting. It seems like most folks around here simply assume you have MT as a surv build. I use a 21/40 build, but after Expose and Thrill, I spend my remaining 4 points elsewhere for utility purposes. How many of you folks here actually run with MT? I mean, yes, it's slightly better DPS, but I value things like dropping a lone point into Wyvern and taking time off my trap cooldowns.

Also, to Whytefyst, I don't generally have the mageblood potion or the shaman in group with me for mana spring, (I'm usually stuck in the leftover group, as lilwolfe put it,) but do you really drop efficiency completely and not go 3/3 on Thrill? That just seems, I dunno, painful to me somehow.

I'm using a 20/41 spec with 2/3 EW and 3/3 ToTH. The expose weakness uptime does not suffer much. With my current crit rate, Cheeky's spreadsheet estimates it around 90% vs. 97% with 3/3. Not having 3/3 ToTH would just hurt too much though.

I'm surprised you don't find the value in Readiness and the added DPS boost from MT to be better than reduced trap CDs and Wyvern Sting (I didn't check your armory for exact spec).

I've found readiness extremely useful in raids where as resourcefulness and Wyvern sting would rarely apply, don't get me wrong they are great for heroics/PVP but they do not seem useful in raids.

With Readiness you can x2 MD, x2 FD in case of resist, x2 trap, x2 deterrence.

Here's a picture of a Hunter combat log while tanking Leo the blind for 17 full hits while he is enraged before getting 1 shotted, so I would not underestimate the power of deterrence. Hunter Pic here

Plus if the raid is wiping and FD is on cooldown, pop readiness and save your gold and consumables.

Obviously the trade off is only 2/3 EW but for 7% uptime you gain dps and a lot of raid utility.

In fact, a large number of us do not, but for different reasons than the ones you list. I've found that while Thrill of the Hunt is a nice talent to grab, there are better DPS talents. I currently have no mana issues (using mainly the free mana pots from Skettis daily), and if I do I just pop a fel mana pot or two and keep going. If you look at my gear, I run almost no mp/5. The one caveat to this is that we run a full time ret pally, who keeps Judgement of Wisdom up on the boss at all times. I suppose that might be why I'm not having issues...? In any case, 3/5 Ranged Weapon Specialization is a much better choice of talents (in my humble opinion) than 3/3 Thrill of the Hunt. Mana can be obtained from other sources, 3% more damage cannot.

Master Tactician isn't worth it either. Not only do you have to spend points in Thrill of the Hunt (or something even more useless in raids) but you then spend 5 points for a ~3% crit increase. I don't know about you guys, but I currently run ~52% crit fully buffed in raid situations. That crit certainly isn't adding to my EW uptime significantly, and 3% crit is still inferior to 3% ranged damage.

Tradeoffs: Thrill of the Hunt, Master Tactician, and Readiness vs Scattershot, 5/5 Imp Arcane Shot (valuable for the tight 1:1.5 rotation I use), and 3/5 Ranged Weapon Specialization. Readiness is nice, but the only serious uses I found for it were resetting a FD when it resisted (easily fixed by planning ahead and feigning early), resetting Deterrence (aside from gimmick fights like Bloodboil or Essence of Souls, if the tank doesn't have it off you before Deterrence is down your raid is screwed already... and on Bloodboil/Souls unless you're absurdly short on rogues and have slow healers you shouldn't need it), and resetting Rapid Fire for a slight DPS buff. I'm sure there are differing opinions on this, but I prefer my current spec after spending time as all of the primary survival specs.

I agree. I used to have 3/3 TotH, but, after reviewing a ton of WWS logs, I found I was only gaining 2-3k mana on an average boss fight. That is the same as 1 mana pot. Not really all that great. I took points out of it an put them into MT instead. Yeah, it is not the best talent, but increased DPS is still increased DPS!

Another thing I recently moved around, is my points from improved arcane shot. I used to have 5/5 with the tighter 1:1.5 rotation that many MM and Surv hunters use. Then, I realized that those 5 points aren't really increasing my DPS. All it does, is simplify my rotation. If I used multi-shot and went back to the standard 1:1.5 rotation, I could spent those 5 points on something else. So, now, I am back to a standard 0/21/40 build.

I think the 0/28/33 build is good too, but, I just don't use multi-shot a lot. It is the second .5 special in my rotation, so, with all the movement, FDs and stop DPS times, my macro gets reset a lot and multi-shot doesn't get to fire very often. I feel like those 3 points normally put in barrage aren't the best place to put them. Also, I LOVE Wyvern sting! It is just too bad the CD is so high.

I would argue that a 0/20/41 build using 1:1.5 rotation with a multi, arcane priority will be higher dps than one which uses 5/5 improved arcane shot + 3/5 RWS but does not include multi. Taking ToTH in this situation allows you to use multi which ultimately yields higher dps.

As far as ToTH, this talent is amazing, I seriously don't understand how you are raiding without it. Over the course of our 4 Azgalor attempts last night I received over 40k Mana from ToTH (including trash & boss).

The closest we got to killing Azgalor was 40% (our first night of attempts) and during that fight ToTH returned over 3k mana.

I find that 6K is not an uncommon return for most boss fights, the longer ones yielding even more return.