Hello fellow hunters

I have been looking a bit on the new buff/debuff system and with the current setup my raid group is going to have I will be the only person able to put up the healing debuff on the boss, via Widow Venom. My mind now goes around if it is worth the focus to apply this debuff and maintain it compared to not using it and having the focus for our major dmg shots/abilities?

I've been doing quite a bit of research and testing into Dire Beast recently.
Using the haste multiplier formula and then comparing with a nearly blank FemaleDwarf profile (linked here), I've been able to determine several haste breakpoints for Dire Beast and levels at which it gains an extra attack per cast.

This is the breakdown for additional attacks:
2.000 Dire Beast attack speed resulting in 08 total attacks = 00.00% total haste (0000/0.000% from gear, no 10% attack speed buff) - Unobtainable reforge in T14 gear
1.875 Dire Beast attack speed resulting in 09 total attacks = 06.66% total haste (2834/6.669% from gear, no 10% attack speed buff) - No haste from gear needed with haste buff
1.666 Dire Beast attack speed resulting in 10 total attacks = 20.00% total haste (3864/9.092% from gear, with 10% attack speed buff) - Reasonable reforge in T14 gear
1.500 Dire Beast attack speed resulting in 11 total attacks = 33.33% total haste (9016/21.22% from gear, with 10% attack speed buff) - Unobtainable reforge in T14 gear
1.364 Dire Beast attack speed resulting in 12 total attacks = 46.66% total haste (1090/2.256% Haste from gear, 10% attack speed + 30% Lust/Hero/Warp)
1.250 Dire Beast attack speed resulting in 13 total attacks = 60.00% total haste (5053/11.89% Haste from gear, 10% attack speed + 30% Lust/Hero/Warp)

Coincidentally, these are also the Cobra Shot breakpoints for BM/SV, since they too have a 2.0 base cast speed. It may be worth reaching the 3864 Haste soft plateau, even though we don't often use 3 Cobra Shots between KC/ES without weaving in another ability to always be getting a 10th Dire Beast attack. The 5053 Haste value would give the 13th Dire Beast attack, and also allow 4 Cobra Shots between KC/ES, (which would definitely overflow focus) during Lust/Hero/Warp, as Cobra Shot would also be down to 1.250 seconds as well.

A very important thing to note is that while Dire Beast attacks should be consistent in theory, they definitely are not in game.
-Out of a test of 50 Dire Beast casts at 06.70% haste (for the 06.66% plateau), 50% of the time I was shorted an attack and only got 8 Dire Beast attacks instead of the expected 9.
-Out of a test of 50 Dire Beast casts at 20.08% haste (for the 20.00% plateau), 20% of the time I was shorted an attack and only got 9 Dire Beast attacks instead of the expected 10.
-Other various haste levels and depending on where I was positioned also had an impact on the expected results. Typically, standing in melee range behind the target dummy yielded the closest results to what was expected. The missed attacks seemed to be due to the pet occasionally appearing to return to you upon cast as if it were on passive before taking it's first or second attack while repositioning behind the target, however this ended up still happening even when changing default pet behavior from Passive to Assist while staying in combat with the target the entire time.

Usually, Dire Beast's first attack is instantaneous with the spell cast, however, on the times it's short, there usually is a ~0.4 second delay between the spell cast and first swing damage.
Examples at 0% haste with 8 attacks: (correct)

Examples with 20.08% haste with 9 attacks: (short)

Examples with 20.08% haste with 10 attacks: (correct)

Excellent analysis. Thanks for the hard work on it!

One item to add is that the 9.09 haste level also has synergy for MM with the T14 4P. That is the required haste level for a tight CS cycle with 3 SSs being performed, which is the recommended haste level for MM in that situation. With the DB benefit too, I will making this the minimum recommended haste level instead of a guideline. Without the T14 4P, I recommend getting closer to 12.93% haste level from gear, so MMs should always be getting that extra attack with proper haste levels.

Moving this here from the SV thread. Updated after the Readiness GCD issue was fixed. This includes the first 31 seconds of what should be the highest DPS sequence for each spec based on DPS potential per GCD.
*Note: Non-Trolls (without Berserking) should need to substitute at least 1 extra focus generating shot into the rotation. Haven't yet had time to analyze the exact differences.

Beast Mastery Opening: Priority -> SrS,BW,aMoC,KS,KC,RF,DB,GT,Ready,Stamp,AS,FF,CoS

Markmanship Opening: Priority -> SrS,aMoC,KS,RF,DB,CS,GT,Ready,Stamp,AiS,AS,SS

Survival Opening: Priority -> BA,aMoC,RF,DB,KS,GT,ES,Ready,Stamp,Multi,AS,CoS
*Note: Lock and Load procs will make it a bit more randomized later in the rotation, currently using estimates.

While updating the MM guide, I realized yet another impact of the MoP changes that affect MM DPS relative to Cata. That is the diminshed benefits from Piercing Shots. PS used to be a major factor in MM DPS with being easily 10-15% of MM damage on most fights. Currently, in FD for the MM Max DPS case, it is doing a measely 4.8% of an MM hunters DPS.

MoP changes that affect PS's damage:

- We no longer have the 30% bleed damage debuff to boost PS damage by an additional 30% making the benefit of PS to our crits be 39% instead of 30%.

- CS's 1s reduced CD is only MoP change of which I am aware that increases PS damage since we are doing more CSs.

- We are using considerably less shots that proc PS damage, even with including the slight increased number of CSs:
-- We are performing less SSs since each SS regens more focus and only 2 are required every CS cycle to maintain the haste buff as oppossed to 4 in Cata. So instead of performing 4 to 5 SSs every 10s we are now doing 2 to 3 SSs every 9 seconds
-- We are performing considerably less hardcast AIs. For most of the later part of Cata, AI is the primary focus dump in most situations and was performed quick frequently. Even at the start of Cata, MMs still performed AIs during the CA phase during RFs, BLs, and other high haste procs. Now we rarely perform AIs outside the CA phase. Even in the CA phase, we perform less AIs since we have so many other worthwhile abilities to use as well that take CA GCDs away from AI. The MM Max DPS case only performs a total of 11 AI hardcasts over the full 7.5 min sim.
-- We still do perform roughly MMM AIs at the same rate as in Cata. The changes to the MMM talent helped to compensate for performing less SSs, such that we still roughly perform 1 MMM AI every other CS cycle on average throughout the fight.

- I am not considering the lower crit rates at the start of the expansion since that is just the nature of the beast; however, for similar crit rates at the start of Cata, PS did much more of our damage in Cata.

Just some thoughts I decided to share...

I ran a simulationcraft report using T14N numbers today to update to the latest data we have on racial rankings by spec. I've updated my FAQ to reflect the results and here are the actual numbers behind those rankings. Note that to simulate the hit/expertise racials I converted the excess hit/expertise into crit rating.

Spec	DPS	Spec Difference
BM Orc	86987	0
BM Troll	86150	837
BM Pandaren	85958	1029
BM Undead	85589	1398
BM Worgen	85539	1448
BM Draenei	85234	1753
BM Dwarf	85223	1764
BM Goblin	85153	1834
BM Blood Elf	84901	2086
BM Tauren	84829	2158
BM Night Elf	84802	2185
BM Human	84743	2244
SV Orc	84255	0
SV Pandaren	83837	418
SV Undead	83548	707
SV Troll	83515	740
SV Worgen	83249	1006
SV Draenei	82974	1281
SV Goblin	82888	1367
SV Dwarf	82739	1516
SV Blood Elf	82702	1553
SV Human	82610	1645
SV Night Elf	82589	1666
SV Tauren	82564	1691
MM Orc	83246	0
MM Pandaren	82816	430
MM Troll	82763	483
MM Undead	82656	590
MM Worgen	82576	670
MM Draenei	82311	935
MM Goblin	82246	1000
MM Dwarf	82134	1112
MM Blood Elf	81874	1372
MM Night Elf	81854	1392
MM Tauren	81828	1418
MM Human	81803	1443

Forgive me if I'm overlooking something obvious, but in that case, why aren't Worgen, Draenei, and Dwarves all ending up with the same DPS numbers?

Draenei have 1 more base agil than dwarves, so they're going to come out slightly ahead. The 11dps higher for BM seems about as expected. For MM the gap was 177dps and for SV it was 235dps, so it's possible that something weird is going on in simc there or possibly it's just the effect of RNG and me not running it on a high enough iteration count. I'll look into it.

With regards to worgen, worgen get 1% crit from their racial which is 600 crit rating. Draenei/Dwarf get 1% hit/expertise respectively which is only 340 hit/expertise rating, so they will naturally be lower as long as crit is a competitive stat.

Hopefully this is the right spot for this. Stampede's current interaction with your pet is either very strange or bugged. If you're using the glyph it is creating identical copies of your pet all the way down to your pets cooldowns. Meaning if your pet has rabid on CD and you cast stampede, all of your pets will pop with rabid on CD. To prevent the micromanagement of that an easy work around is just to not use the glyph. That forces you to make sure all of your pets are specced ferocity, and none of your pets have growl on.

It's obviously nothing game changing but if you were using the glyph for whatever reason just be aware that you'll have to watch Rabid as well now. It seems to me like this would be a bug and the glyph should duplicate the same pet rather than creating an identical copy down to the cooldowns but I don't know. Either way something to be wary of.

The behavior that Lilbitters has seen with Dire Beast and inconsistent use of the full attack profile is very frustrating. I've spent some time trying to codify the situations where the dropped attacks occur. Unfortunately, this is the sort of situation that is also resistant to logging; I can provide dozens of "correct" and dozens of "missed attack" logs, but they are not informative as to the real-world conditions that resulted in the difference.

I believe there are two different situations which can result in a dropped attack, although they may actually be symptoms of the same problem. The most common source of a dropped attack is a delay prior to the first attack. Under "correct" behavior, the DB should make its first attack immediately after the button is pressed, but sometimes that doesn't happen. Minimizing the range to target seems to help, although I have some evidence, below the threshold of statistical significance so far, that extreme close range may slightly increase the chances of the first hit delay. Lilbitters reported that positioning in the rear arc may also be helpful; I have not tested that to any meaningful degree.

The second situation is a delay between attacks. Frequently, this happens between the first attack and the second, but I've got at least one log showing a delay after attack #5. This often (but possibly not always?) has a visual cue: the DB pet will "twitch", either repositioning slightly or spinning to face the hunter before returning to attack. I have also seen situations where real pets will exhibit this behavior. It's most visible while pet tanking, for obvious reasons, and is pretty much impossible to log, unfortunately. The Abomination of Anger in the Crypt of Forgotten Kings scenario seems particularly prone to this, and so may be a good target for further testing.

I suspect that the latter problem is a flaw in the pet pathing AI. The former may be as well; DB appears to summon the pet into a default position that the AI believes to be the "proper place" for combat to begin. If that placement doesn't play nice with the algorithm that determines if the pet is in the correct place to attack, it adjusts, and we see an attack delay. If that's the case, and we can find a test encounter that reproduces the bug consistently, we should be able to report it. I'm off for a couple days for my anniversary, so regrettably, I won't be able to do the heavy lifting on this, at least not for a few days.

I also haven't had the chance to determine whether glyphed Stampede pets inherit changes in pet autocast profiles. If so, there may be a reasonably viable workaround to the bug reported by Repins -- leaving Rabid autocast disabled, and only firing it following Stampede (and, manually, following the subsequent cooldown). In fights that are expected to last < 5 minutes, the correct behavior would be to use it on cooldown a second time (at t = 4 minutes), but in fights that are likely to see a second Stampede, optimal dps would probably require delaying the Rabid for paired cooldowns. In a sufficiently long encounter, the pushback from delayed Rabids would eventually consume the dps gain from paired use with iterative Stampedes, but I don't think there are any extant fights long enough for that to occur (and I think it's only a reasonable concern for BM besides). Regardless, I'm pretty sure that cooldown-state inheritance is a bug, so hopefully we won't have to deal with the problem for long.

The reason you do not see SrS in the SV opening sequence Bitterst came up with is because you should apply Serpent Sting with Multi-Shot as you got plenty of focus to do that at that point.

I don't know what you mean about not seeing Serpent Sting in there, I see it as the first ability used in BM and MM.