Sore82

So, I tried the 2:1 through BT this week. I respeced to 0/20/41 and changed my normal 1.5:1 macro to the standard 2:1 /cast macro. Here are my initial thoughts:

First of all, as I stated just before in my previous post...the 2:1 has issues. First thing I noticed on fights like Teron/Mother /RoS...any time you get hit, it has a good chance to mess up the macro...especially while hasted. I found it getting stuck casting Steady Shot on thouse fights and had to lift off of the macro and wait for it to start casting Auto before it would be ok again. But for the most part, those fights really sucked. The next issue that revolves around the same thing is using consumables or casting Rapid Fire/Readiness...doing this was not as easy as a 1.5:1. In my 1.5:1 macro, I could easily keep the macro button held down and spam click Hunters Mark or a Mana Pot or whatever and it would work. With the 2:1, it seemed to get pissed off if I tried to do that. It would sometimes get stuck on Stead if I did that...so in the end, I actuaily had to just stop pressing my macro button, drink/cast whatever, and then go back to what I was doing.

Now, having said all that, the macro DID work for the most part when those issues I just talked about were not going on. On fights like Council, you can see from my WWS that the 2:1 worked near perfectly. I will admit that I did not use [Ashtongue Talisman of Swiftness], mostly because I had a hard time believing it would out preform Berserkers Call or Tsunami Talisman, and from browsing the forums, most people agreed. I dont have a DST, so I could not use that either, obviously. However, having said that, I highly doubt that having either of those trinkets would make THAT huge of a difference in my DPS...im sure they might add some, but not some crazy amount (like 100DPS).

Here are my WWS from last week (when I used my standard 1.5:1, and 3:2 while hasted) macro, and this weeks 2:1 ONLY macro. I did not skimp on pots or anything...and for the most part, the group makeups were the same. I had a BM with me for all the fights this week, but thats all for group buffs. Last week I think I had a Feral in for Council (but I died at like 30%).

Im not saying one thing or another about the macro...just posting my results from 1 weeks worth of trying out the macro:

Last Week
Wow Web Stats

This Week
Wow Web Stats

I will be keeping the 2:1 through at least Brut/Felmyst this coming week...I want to test it on them for sure compared to my previous weeks.

Also take note, I did change pets, from Wind Serpent to Ravager. I dont know what it was, but when I had the Lightning Breath command in my macro, it had a higher chance of messing up the 2:1 macro. I also did not use Kill Command at all for the same reason. And last point, my pet died pretty early this week on Council (like within the first 10-20%)...I have a feeling that if it had lived, I would have done a good amount more damage/DPS.

 

Aern

Ok well I set it up and it seems when i press the button i bound it to (g9) it doesnt want to loop, even though i've set it to repeat. When I hold the key down it does the same thing, just fires 1 steady then just fires auto-shots over and over no more steady casts. When I spam the button it spams the shots but still ends up chaining on rare occasions. Not sure if this is how it was supposed to work but I was under the assumption that once I press the button it should repeat the command over and over until canceled. Or I guess thats just what I was hoping for.

After reading more posts it seems like you're just holding the button down which seems like a bit of a bother to me, especially on movement fights cause you're having to move your hand around alot more. But its still something I would like to try out.

 

Sore82

Ok, I had this same issue while trying to set up my G15...so I think I can help. Ill do a nice little step by step for you so that hopefully we can get this to work for you.

The first step you need to do is go into your G15 program. Once in there click "Settings" and then "Profiler".

Once in there, click the "Profile" tab, and make sure BOTH of the options are checked (turned on) and are set to "Default Configuration". Save your settings.

Now, while in game, press the "MR" button on your G15 keyboard.

Once pressed, click the G# key you want to use.

Now press the number or letter that is bound to your shot macro. So, for example, if my Macro was bound to the "1" key, I would press "MR" then G# then "1"

Now, tab out of the game and go into your G15 program. Make sure you are in the "Default Configuration" Profile and not the "World of Warcraft" one; if you are in the "World of Warcraft" one, click the scroll down window and choose "Default Configuration"

You should notice that whichever G# key you hit will have a "Quick Macro" typed on it.

Click on the G# key you assigned to your macro and then click on "Macro Manager".

You should see 2 arrows (one going up and one going down). In between the arrows, you need to place a delay (if it is not already in there. I use 0.200. The macro should look like this (up and down though) : -> 0.200 sec delay <-

Hit "OK" and you will be back in the main program screen.

Click on the G# key you assigned to your macro again and click on "Repeat Options" and click on "While Pressed". You can also choose "Toggle", which will auto-cast the macro for you without you having to hold it down. NOTE - that with this option, the macro will only turn off if you hit the G# button again.

Now you should be good to go. Doing this should spam the macro every .2 seconds either when you hold down the macro "While Pressed" or constantly when you "Toggle" the G#.

Hopefully, this works for you.

The point of having the macro work "While Pressed" is to give you a little more control over the things that are going on. With some macros, if you need to drink a pot, or do another ability...they might not work correctly if your macro is spamming away. Its like having your hand on the Clutch of a car instead of just holding the wheel...just makes you feel like you have a little more control (at least for me it does).

 

Aern

Yeah I ended up using a few quick macros for the g7-11 keys to make things like FD RF Readiness and Blood Fury/ Zerker's Call easier to get to. Problem seemed to be I didn't have it set to default, it was on the wow profile instead, prolly missed it in the original instructions. Thank you very much for the help, I'll try and get yall some numbers from brut this week and hopefully from a felmyst kill if we can get our act together.

One huge problem I see with holding down the button is that its not easy to get to my press to talk key, what will my guild do without my abnoxious blabbering all the time?!?!?!

Also I tried out adding in /castsequence instead of just /cast for steady shot and I definitely did feel a slightly slower start on second steady, it seems to me like the castsequence is a round about attempt to fix the chaining problem by slowing down the casting of your steady shots and hopefully allowing that little bit of extra room auto shot needs to go off. So it might look like a good way to solve the problem but it doesn't completely fix it from what I've tested and it ends up lowering dps anyway.

 

Varon

I tested some macros on Boom today (bound to a g15 key with 20ms down/up -> 40ms repeat time as stated before by Intermission)

No haste used...
I cast Huntersmark and waited for the timer to count down to 1min20sec and then startet to push the button:

1:1 Macro:
Results: 33 Autoshots and 32 Steady Shots -> 65 Shots fired...

1:1.X with Arcane:
Results: 32 Auto Shots, 32 Steadyshots and 11 Arcane Shots -> 75 Shots fired...

Manually written 1:1.5 Macro with Arcane and Multi:
Results: 32 Autoshots, 31 Steady Shots, 8 Multi-Shots, 7 Arcane Shots -> 78 Shots fired...

So I get something about 0.5 to 0.7 Shots per second...

Are these results ok? 1:1 seems fine...and for the other 2 Macros a 1:1.5 rotation should have been the result...
Shot Rotations are the one ting that I don't fully understand... ^_^

Another Question would concerne KC...I always thougth one should use it because it means +dmg and more dps for the hunter...but in the last few days I read many posts about KC messing with the Shot Rotation...so use it in the macro or not?


PS: I'll try the /cast !Auto Shot /cast Steady Shot Macro without /castsequence, too...results will follow!


Results:
Using /cast !Auto Shot /cast Steady Shot Macro without /castsequence was horrible...there were 3 or more steadys in a row before another autoshot :/

 

volant

Is there a difference between a /cast steady shot /cast !autoshot macro and just spamming the steady shot button out of your spellbook? They perform the same for me, and logically speaking they seem exactly the same.

 

Sore82

The difference is you can add lines to the macro that prevent errors from spamming your screen, or turn off the sound that it makes when you spam the button. You can also add various lines that tell your pet to attack or do a certain attack like Lightning Breath.

But yes, in its most basic forum, spaming "Steady Shot" out of your spellbook will do the same thing as the /cast macro.

 

volant

But you could do all that with a macro that's just /cast Steady Shot. So the autoshot line is completely extraneous?

 

Groggan

Doesn't having both in the macro theoretically 'guarantee' that an auto shot will get off when it can? Or is that why the
/cast !Auto Shot
/cast Steady Shot
isn't working cleanly except at certain haste levels? Because the /cast !Auto Shot line is essentially just wasted space?

 

Kierran

As a follower of this thread, I decided to give Survival a try shortly after my guild downed Kael/Vashj. I've enjoyed the change of pace from BM, but I'm worried that I'm not contributing as much raid DPS as Survival even when Expose Weakness is taken into account. With normal raid buffs (not including group-specific buffs like GoA and LotP), I sit at ~2500 AP, ~40% crit, and ~900 Agility (0/20/41 spec).

Problem #1 is gear. We're 5/5 Hyjal, 3/9 BT, but I haven't seen anything of note drop for me yet. I expect my stats are low for this level of progression, but I'm looking for confirmation of this fact.

Problem #2 is grouping. My understanding is that Survival hunters (and the raid) benefit immensely from GoA totems. However, we're a pretty caster-heavy guild and the grouping reflects as such. A typical raid features a caster group (4 warlocks/shadow priests + elemental shaman), melee group (3 rogues, enh shaman, feral druid, maybe a ret pally in place of a rogue), and an 'other' group (2 mages, shadow priest, BM hunter or resto shaman, and me). It's uncommon that I'm in a group with a shaman, and if I am, Groups 3 and 5 want Wrath of Air and Group 4 wants Windfury. I understand these groupings and totem choices, but the fact remains that I miss out on almost 100 Agility (roughly 100 personal and 50 raid DPS) as a result.

Cheeky's shows BM with a raw 60 DPS edge. Adding 3% from FI * 3 group DPS * 1000 DPS is another 90 for 150 DPS total. At 900 Agility, I give 225 AP * 6 physical DPSers * 0.2 DPS/AP is 270 DPS, so on paper Survival looks like it's 120 DPS ahead. But this is for perfect raid conditions with everyone alive, no split DPS, etc etc. The DPS difference is close enough that it sounds like Survival is only situationally better than BM.

So my questions are:

A) Is my gear level sufficient to justify specing Survival over BM?

B) Is Survival still viable even without Grace of Air? Is there an argument to be made for switching up our raid groups that results in a net DPS increase?

Basically I'm trying to figure out if staying Survival makes sense from a raid DPS perspective. I don't mind being lower on DPS meters if I'm confident I'm providing enough raid DPS to make up for it. But like this thread says, I need to be able to justify my raid slot even during non-optimal raid conditions and I'm not sure that I do right now. Any comments are appreciated.

 

Arzen

Umm....forgive me if this is a totally stupid question, but is the [Crossbow of Relentless Strikes] as big an upgrade to the [Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix] as it looks for a survival hunter? I haven't gotten into Cheeky's spreadsheet yet, and I'm wondering if that's an effective use of 150 badges. I'm losing agility, I don't need the hit rating, and I have no idea whether I'd prefer 2.8 over 2.9, or if it even matters. I'll admit I'm a little clueless as to how much that extra 10dps compares to the loss of agility.

Thanks!

 

Eurytos

What makes /cast !Auto Shot /cast Steady Shot work is haste. The Steady Shot that causes the Auto Shot to be pushed back is so much shorter than the global cooldown that it allows the Auto Shot to cast before the GCD is ready. Without haste, you end up spamming Steady Shot most of the time.

Personally, I prefer Steady Multi Auto, Steady Auto, Steady Arcane Auto, Steady Auto.

I tried Improved Arcane Shot but I feel the damage lost from GFTT is not worth it. GFTT with a Wind Serpent is highly underestimated as Survival.

 

Enova

A) Your gear IS quite unsuited to a raid support survival build, I'll give you that. The Vengeful weapon slots and engi trinket are abysmal, really, but I blame that on bad luck with survival drops, and not really planning your upgrades for the spec. However, if you compromise and use survival as a personal dps spec with the perk of addded raid buffing, you can work around that until you get adequate gear. See this thread for what to aim for

B) Yes, it is viable even without GOA. Survival is a raid utility build, granted. But in equal gear, SV personal dps should not be far behind a BM hunter. And you'd also benefit from the added utility of the spec (lower hit cap, mana returns, readiness if you have it), which allow you to regain some ground in most real raid situations.

I raid without GOA most of the times. Why? Rogues, warriors, even a retri pally need WF a lot more. It's a key component to their dps in the case of arms warriors and retri pallies, and a significant boost to rogues and fury warriors. And my melee own. I think they're worth buffing, even if that means gimping my own immediate figures. I did that by speccing survival. If I got GOA over WF away from them, I'd be back to square one, when I was still BM. I'd take back whatever buffs I'd give them, and all the figures would be the same as before.

What's GOA for me? about 100 agility, raid buffed. That's a bit of crit, 100 more AP, and 25 raid wise AP. However, since you probably spec Survival to assist your physical dps crew, the question is... will about 1 or 2 extra dps (25 AP) per physical damage dealer be worth more than a Windfury for 4 others? No. Not even close. Not even the bonus to your own dps isn't worth it. You're one person getting buffed, as opposed to 4 others in the melee group. That doesn't mean you don't bring enough utility to the raid. It just means an enha shaman would be better placed somewhere else.

Ideally, though, if you could get stuck with a feral druid, shadow priest and resto shaman group, and maybe another hunter or two, you'd probably have a realistic chance at GOA, while also getting some substantial dps increase via LOTP (and maybe Trueshot Aura or Ferocious Inspiration), and a decent increase to dps uptime from the shadowpriest. It helps that as a survival hunter that your buffs are raid wide, and as such benefit people outside your on group (both Expose Weakness and Improved hunter's Mark, if you have it).

While we're at it, you probably don't want to get stuck in the melee group just to get a shot at an enha shaman, because WF takes priority over GOA, regardless of you and any feral druid that might be in there. You'd effectively gain negative synergy (not contributing, not gaining anything), as I like to call it, via Battle Shout and Windfury, while losing at least part of your sustained dps capacity (from mana totems and/or shadowpriests). You're better off not aiming for GOA if that's the case.

Guilty as charged ^

 

Groggan

Ahh, ok, that explains why the /cast !Auto Shot /cast Steady Shot macro doesn't seem to work cleanly all the time.

If you aren't hasted enough to get the Steady Shot cast time less than the GCD (which is 1.5sec, right?) then it's almost surely not going to work, and if you have other things (like Kill Command) filling in the extra space in the GCD they can bump the Auto Shot out as well.

From that description the /cast Steady Shot macro should work under the hasted situations as long as you have Auto Shot already toggled on, has anyone ever tested to see if that would work?

 

Leighlu

The bow speed kills a 1:1.5 rotation into a 1:1.4, which is your bread and butter, IMO. For me, it's a 16 personal dps DOWNGRADE over Sunfury per the spreadsheet, not to mention the Agility loss. (It looks like a wonderful ~18 dps upgrade when you first select it, but you have to recalculate the shot rotation.)

If you're spamming a 3:2, it's a 20 dps upgrade over Sunfury, but both are on the order of 150 dps lower than a 1:1.5 rotation.

*this is with my current 0/24/37 spec and gear. As always your results will vary.*

 

Kierran

I'd obviously like to replace the axe with a [Halberd of Desolation] or something similar, but the S3 bow compares favorably with other early T6 weapons (Bristleblitz, Legionkiller, etc), at least according to Cheeky. Am I missing something? As for the trinket, I was probably PVPing at the time, though the [Core of Ar'kelos] that I normally have there is almost more embarrassing. I'll probably pick up a [Bloodlust Brooch] shortly to replace it, but I'm saving badges for the Sunwell ring at the moment.

I'm pretty far behind our BM hunter at the moment. Here's a WWS from a recent BT run (I'm Deimos). Granted, he outgears me (4-piece T5) and benefits from EW to boot, but that's still a bigger gap than I'd like there to be.

I'll probably give 7/20/34 or 0/28/33 a try and see if I can up my personal DPS while minimizing the impact to EW. If I have the Shadow Priest anyway, might as well make the most of it.

Thanks for the input on my dilemma. I really like the spec and enjoy what I bring to the raid, but if the gear to support it doesn't start dropping soon, it'll be back to BM for me.

 

KraxisSingular

Overall I agree, WF beats GoA for value to the raid. However you make a mistake. At T6 25 AP equates roughly to 10 DPS. The 14 AP = 1 DPS is only in case of the tooltip, and we all know that our DPS is way higher than the tooltip indicates.
And one mustn't forget that the tank (pallytanks much less so) gets the same bonus the physical melee and other Hunters get too, and pets as well. In the case of the tanks it will mean better aggrogeneration. And in the case of the melee it will mean less spiky threat. So if your raid is running close to the limit of the MT's threat capabilities, then GoA is not a bad option at all.

 

Uday

I've been BM pretty much exclusively since 70, and went survival for Brutallus tonight. I was really surprised by what the SV spec is capable of. With pretty much optimal group set up, I was able to keep up with the two BM hunters on DPS.

Wow Web Stats

My group was me, two BM hunters, a resto shaman, and a feral druid. I was using a 7/20/34 spec and I used a macro built off of

/cast !Auto Shot
/cast Steady Shot

with extra lines to cast kill command and lightning breath.

 

• Intermission

That's amazing dps for using a /cast/cast macro. How did you stop it from Steady-Chaining, especially when using KC and LB? I noticed 7 Drums of Battle, 2 Heroism's, a DST/haste pots and IAotH. Did your macro successfully scale to a 1:1 when hasted during these periods or did you swap to a manual rotation?

Could you please tell us your latency while raiding and what input device you use (mouse, g15, etc)? This is the first example I have seen of a /cast/cast that has actually worked for a Survival hunter in a raid.


So for /cast/cast to work, the cast time of Steadyshot needs to be:

GCD minus "hidden autoshot cast time". Latency and server-side queuing needs to fit into that calculation too, because the difference is noticeable when in a raid (or even a zone change, as seen with Blasted Lands tests vs Dr Boom tests).

edit: BUT... Why is it that when I rapid fire I can still chain steadies, and also when I tried the macro as BM I chained steadies. Gah.

 

Groggan

That's what it sounds like. I noticed that Uday had on a good amount of haste gear as well, which would explain why the rotation worked so well for him.

Edit: It would also explain why the macro can morph from 2:1 to 3:2 to 1:1 depending on haste levels (the spot in the rotation where the auto can fall in the GCD-gap slides forward on the timeline as you get more haste).

 

Enova

You might want to give it a try with a different shot rotation, as well... From what I can tell, yours seems kind of erratic at the moment. Try aiming for a 1:1.5; by the looks of it you were still trying to use your old BM rotation, and you just remembered to add in arcanes and specials at times.

Bristleblitz will always be superior to the S3 bow; Legionkiller, I'm not so sure about it now. I just noticed it's got a slightly lower item level (and as such, item damage) than the s3 bow. Couple that with the faster speed, and yeah.

I went with the tooltip damage here for the purpose of estimating the effect of EW on trash clears, which takes the better part of raids. On boss encounters, what you have described pretty much happens, and we have a larger impact on the raid dps. However, we can't spec survival for bosses alone, and on Hyjal waves, or the ROS trash, for instance, we're gonna find ourselfs splitting dps massively.

As for aggro generation, I'm no expert on threat scaling mechanics, but while we do significantl buff it, it's not our main concern. Well, not for my particular raid, anyway.

Guilty as charged ^

 

• Intermission

Then again, I can still chain steadies while under Rapid Fire (and also as BM spec). So.. hmm. I'm still sorta stumped. I honestly think it's something to do with the autoshot wanting to cast while the server-side queue system is telling the next steadyshot to fire. Which could explain why latency has such a bad effect.


edit: I just took DST out of the bank for the first time in months and went over to Dr Boom. It procced, I chained 4 steadies (2 more than I should have shot). Fun fun. This is with 180 latency, I just got lowerping again.

 

Tiberium

WoW, no I really mean WOW!!!

Not only is this awsome DPS for a /cast /cast macro it is awsome DPS in a Worldwide Global context. The number 1 world DPS guild on Brutallus is currently Might and their Survival hunter Rylai posted a DPS count of 1728. So in context I would suggest 2100 as Survival albeit 7/20/34 is pretty much ground breaking.

Can you post the exact /cast /cast macro you used?

I actually tried using the [Shivering Felspine] yesterday along with /cast /cast and chained horribly when incuding KC and LB lines

More info please and job well done sir.

 

Althrinn

I managed to go to 1.75k dps on Brutallus yesterday (WWS), using 3:2, and switching to 1:1 whenever I got a haste effect. I was pretty content with it, but seeing Uday's outcome made me want to tweak it a bit more. After some simulations in Cheeky's, I fall under impression, that switching to 1:1 while DST procs is actually a loss of dps compared to 3:2, and with QS it barely makes a difference. It seems to me, that 1:1 is only valid while on RF, Heroism, or stack of 2 or more of QS/DST/Haste Pot).

With my gear (after slight modifications), it seems to be most beneficient to go 3:2 (no haste effects) and switch to 1.5:1 (soft haste - QS, DST, Haste Pot), or to 1:1 (hard haste - Rapid Fire, Heroism, stacked 2 or more soft haste).

To this end, I'm gonna test the following today on Brutallus:

/cast !Auto Shot
/castsequence [nomodifier:alt] Steady Shot, !Ąuto Shot
/castsequence [modifier:alt] Steady Shot, !Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, !Auto Shot
/castrandom [nomodifier:alt/shift] Multi-Shot, Arcane Shot

I use G11 (same as G15), with "toggle" setting, so using this macro would be basically to toggle it on, and then press shift or alt accordingly to haste effects. Oh, and you do get a proper 3:2 rotation using this, you just have to keep shift down to block Arcane Shot once in 10 seconds. If someone wants to try it, Power Auras or a similar addon can be very helpful to notice haste effects faster, and with opacity setting it should be easy to tell "soft" from "hard" haste too.

Edit: I tried /cast/cast macro, but it chains Steady 4 times quite often.

 

Osse

What kind of macro repeat speed are you using Intermission?

I made lots of 4-5 minute tests yesterday with /cast !auto /cast steady using 3.0 weapon speed, 53 or 90 passive haste (testing how haste affects 2:1) with 25-30ms and never got even three steadies in a row. I use Logitech G9 mouse with a macro bound to one mouse button that clicks a button on my keyboard up every 20ms and down every 20ms for 20 times per mouse click. I will get a G11 keyboard soon though.. Bored with constant clicking now.