I finally had a chance to look at your MM simulation. The initial DPS was 96992.

Here are some comments I have for increasing the MM numbers or possible bugs that need to be fixed.

1) PS not being calculated correctly:

It does not appear that PS is being calculated correctly, which greatly hurts MM DPS. During some 30s CA phase simulations, the only shots that trigger it are SS and AI, and both are at 35.6% +75% =111.6% crit chance. Thus, their crit chance should be capped with doing 100% crits.

With 8 AIs at 154849 damage each and 10 SSs at 23844 damage each, that equates to 443170 PS damage, which averages out to 14772 DPS over the 30s, not the 4924 DPS reported, which is 1/3 the amount. Now of course, some of the PS damage was lost at the end, but I do not think FD models that, and I do not think that almost 300K (about 68%) of the PS damage was still left to tick off at the end of the period.

For a whole 7.5 min run, 1555 DPS from PS is really low. Just the 44 AIs alone and without factoring in the CA phase all crits results in 1424 DPS from PS. Also not including the CA phase, the 152 SSs result in about 750 DPS. The 43 CSs result in about 1484 DPS from PS. I get a total of 3658 PS DPS from my calculations with not including the CA benefits.

2) Rapid Recuperation not incorporated correctly

It does not appear that RR is being added correctly. At the 5111 haste rating in the Sim, that is 12.026% haste from gear resulting in a 4.481 focus regen. FD shows this value correctly. RF is 40% haste, resulting in a regen of 6.273 for those without RR. With RR providing 12 focus every 3 secs, that is equivalent to 4 FPS, resulting in 10.273 (which is consistent with Cata), but FD shows 8.273. It appears that FD is adding in only half the amount. MoP Wowhead still shows me the 12 focus every 3s, so unless this ability has been nerfed (and WoWhead is not showing the nerf) to 6 focus every 3 secs, FD is missing about half the focus from RR.

3) Aspect of the Iron Hawk not implemented

Both WoWhead and the WoW talent calculators show Aspect of the Iron Hawk also providing 10% AP. The ability is red on the FD talent calculator showing no DPS effect, and when selected or unselected, the DPS does not change. Obviously, this affects all of the hunter specs.

4)Should not stack RF and BL

The Sim starts not only with the back to back RFs but also Heroism. This is not ideal and ends up being a lot of wasted haste for MM since SS cast time is at 0.713s and AI cast time is at 1.034s. Just like in Cata, ideally MMs do not want to stack RFs with BL. If the raid is starting the fight with BL, then start the RFs after. Here are some improvements with moving the BL to different locations.

a) After the RFs are done at about 32s (7% of the fight) in: 96167, +232 DPS
- In this case, there is a few second overlap with RF, but it maximizes hasted CA time.
b) After the RFs are done at about 36s (8% of the fight) in: 95608, -336 DPS
- Not as good since part of the CA phase was unhasted
c) At the start of the KS phase: 95136, -808 DPS
- Unlike in Cata, BL in this phase is not as useful since we are only casting 2 SS instead of 4 and since with all of the focus free instant cast KSs and other abilities like GT, we have less cast time shots affected by haste.

Note that for a shorter fight where the CA phase is fully covered by RF that BL is fine at any other time in the fight other than the KS phase. It is only where the CA phase is longer than the 30s back to back RF duration that it is ideal to chain BL after (or vice versa) to maximize hasted CA time.

5) Unideal CA phase shot priority

When looking at the CA phase only of 30s duration, a few items are not ideal with the starting rotation, these include:

a) Starting with 2 SSs to get the Steady Focus buff. This wastes all of the focus generated by the 2 SSs - which is roughly 37 focus. Furthermore, after the 2 SSs all the sim uses is all instant cast abilities that do not take advantage of the SF, RF-Stampede-MoC-GT-DB-Readiness-GT-DB. This requires a new SS pair to be cast to refresh SF once all these instant abilities are done. In fact, SF actually falls off briefly during the second SS cast to refresh it. The only items that take advantage of the additional haste from the SF are your autoshots and Stampede. The first AI cast is not until 13s into the CA phase. Only 8 AIs are used the whole time, with 2 of them being instant cast MMM AIs.

Personally, if it is best to blow all those instant cast CDs at the start, I would not bother casting the first SS pair and Stampede until after since Stampede is not affected by Readiness and since the full 20s will still be affected by RF haste. However, I could not figure out anyway to delay the casts of the SSs initially in FD without changing ISS behavior to Standard Priority, which is a bad option since it does not guarantee SS pairs to get SF.

b) Other focus is being wasted as the start as well, even with delaying the first 2 SSs casts. RF is cast increasing our regen, but then the sim casts Stampede and DB, both which cost no focus. Thus, we lose the 16.5 (current FD) to 20.5 focus regened over those casts (not including the regen over the latency). Hence, I suggest having MoC cast before RF, Stampede, and DB so the focus regen will be better used.

Making this change in the Sim has no effect for this CA test case, but it makes sense.

c) Currently, after casting RF, 7 instant abilities are cast that are not affected by RF, except for Stampede. These were listed previously in a). To better take advantage of both RF and Readiness, if it is worthwhile to use all of these abilities, then I suggest moving the MoC, DB, and GT initial casts before the RF cast.

Thus, the order changes from: RF-Stampede-MoC-GT-DB-Readiness-GT-DB
To: MoC-GT-DB-RF-Stampede-Readiness-GT-DB

This can allow RF to affect more cast time shots. Making this change in the sim resulted in no change in DPS since the same shots were cast; however, RF still had additional time left after the end of the 30s simulation, so making this change in the CA phase should be beneficial.

One thing not considered here is trinket uses/procs and other buffs like Blood Fury stacking and their durations. The ideal order will be affect some when factoring these in.

d) Just like we defer casting SrS and CS during the CA phase, we need to evaluate whether it is beneficial to cast these other abilities during the CA phase. Below is an analysis of each of the abilities currently being used in the CA phase in the sim. Also note that each ability used other than AIs and SSs also slightly reduce the chance for MMM AI Procs.

- Stampede: Not necessary to use during the CA phase from the benefits of CA, but still beneficial to use due to the haste from RF and stacking of trinket procs and racials like Blood Fury. Although with costing no focus, it does not necessarily need to be cast right away but can wait until after some focus has been spent.
- GT: 121328 at a 15 focus cost and GCD
- MoC: 458277 at 60 focus cost and a GCD
- DB: 148849 at 0 focus cost, a GCD, but some focus regen.
- AI: 154263 *1.3 PS = 200542 at 50 focus and a 1.345 cast time with SF and RF or a GCD if a MMM AI proc.

I would contend that GT probably is not beneficial over the CA phase since its damage is considerably lower than AIs and since it costs focus. Note that if cast GT is beneficial, then casting CS would be beneficial to since its damage when factoring in the SrS refresh is much higher. The 1 cast of MoC is beneficial. The DB casts are probably beneficial as well since they do high damage, cost no focus, and regen focus, allowing more AIs and less SSs.

The initial DPS with all of these abilities included is 172365.

If I exclude GT, MoC, and DB from the CA phase, I get 146013 DPS for a loss of 26351 DPS in the Sim. Note that 2 more AIs and 4 more SSs were cast, so with fixing the PS problem, the DPS of this case will be higher.

If I add back in MoC, I get 157540 DPS for a loss of 14825 DPS. 1 more AI and 4 SSs are cast, so better PS modeling will help this case.

If I also then add back in BD, I get 164578 DPS for a loss of 7787 DPS, but with 1 more AI and only 1 more SS due to the additional focus. PS alone fixes probably cannot make up that difference, but is with fixing RR for an additional 60 focus and 1 more AI should make not using GT in the CA phase a good choice.

e) Since GT is close to being beneficial during the CA phase, I decided to check SrS and CS. Adding them to the priority with no GT was a +1148 DPS gain over not having CS and SrS.

With GT included, it was only a 3 DPS gain, but with PS being calculated correctly, it would be an even higher gain.

Will have to reevaluate after the PS and RR fixes are done, but I assume that not including GT during CA would be ideal and that possibly including CS and SrS may be beneficial.

f) Anyway it would be good to possibly include some additional disable while CA is active options for GT and DB. I assume that DB will always be good, but might as well make an option for it to be safe. To be complete, should also probably have options for Blink Strike, Lynx Rush, Powershot, and Barrage in case those spec abilities are chosen. Might as well add an option for MoC as well.

6) Move RF Lower in the Priority

Moving RF to just before Readiness in the priority list is a small 9 DPS gain. Nothing big.

7) CS wait time is too large

Waiting a whole 0.5s to cast CS is too large.That is half a GCD. Considering all of the abilities that we have that do comparable damage to CS, waiting that long can be a huge DPS loss. I suggest halfing the amount to 0.2 to 0.3s. This is what I did in Cata. FD seems to favor this with about 180 DPS gain.

8) Stat priorites

Since abilities are still being modified, it is hard to exactly determine which stats are best, especially what the ideal amount of haste is. Since it seems that initially in MoP that an AS rotation is the best option and that somewhere between a 2 SS and 3 SS rotation is focused balanced. This information kind of drives the ideal haste amount (not considering latency). Several factors to consider:

a) A 3 SS cycle is tight with a 1.33s cast time. This requires an unreasonably high 18.58% haste from gear in early MoP.
b) A 2 SS cycle is tight with a 1.5s cast time. This requires an easy to achieve 5.4% haste from gear.
c) During RFs, only 12.93% haste from gear is required for your SSs to be capped. This haste level results in a 1.4s SS cast time when RF is not active.

Thus, for early MoP, I suggest somewhere between 5.4% and 12.93% haste from gear trying to get closer to 12.93% as possible without sacrificing too much crit or mastery. This means we should shot for between 2295 and 5495 haste rating. The 5111 in the Sim falls in this range. With the stats available in the T14H gear set, it appears that getting to the 5495 amount is reasonable and a DPS increase, even with giving up some crit to achieve it. Making one reforge change to get to 5484 haste rating increased DPS by an additional 111 DPS with the lower CS wait time. However, reforging more crit to haste after that is a DPS loss.

I don't believe I changed anything in the 4pc modeling- did you maybe test with a gear set that wasn't wearing the 4pc?

I did add the 4pc T14 to my beta haste calculator today, which btw should be up to date if you find it useful to figure out specific haste points.

Can you think of a good logical way to give control over the ISS rule? Do we want to disable the rule entirely during careful aim or would that be too much? Maybe disable it if certain haste buffs are active, but that could encompass a lot. Or I could maybe have an additional option that applies the rule only if focus is below a certain amount? Or I could just delay applying that rule in the first x seconds of the fight. Any ideas that don't greatly overcomplicate things? MM already has more options than any other spec and I suspect the list will get longer since it's so special.

Thanks for adding that option. As anticipated, disabling it during the CA phase is a DPS benefit by about 250 DPS in the case I did.

However, I thought that after disabling GT that using SrS/CS instead would be even a greater DPS benefit. This is because CS itself has damage consistent with GT, but with adding in the SrS damage and the PS damage is much higher. Although it is slightly better than using GT during CA phase, it is considerably worse than not using either. So I would only recommend using CS during the CA phase on fights where the self-healing over that first 10% of boss health is needed.

Due to DB's focus gains and high deamage, it is definitely still useful to use during the CA phase since it gives more focus for more AIs. Also a single cast gains about twice as much focus than an SS cast does and still does much more damage than an SS. Even with 100% crit and PS damage for the SS, DB does over 4x the damage in FD. Thus, I see no need to add in an option to possibly disable DB during the CA phase as I had mentioned as a possibility previously just to have the option available for messing around. We are going to want to use DB as much as possibly since it is essentially is a direct replacement for extra SSs that do not maintain SF with doing both more damage and providing more focus than that SS.

In fact, I would almost put DB higher on the priority list than CS but still is better to have CS higher on the priority list if CS and Db are up at the same time due to the CS cast clearing focus space for the full regen from DB, while with the other order, there is a greater possibility for focus wasting.

Actually it's normal for stats from gear AP to be blank. The only actual AP we usually get from gear is the leg patch and the new MoP leg patches don't have AP anymore. It's only showing you AP actually on the gear, not calculated AP from the agility on gear, so I don't think that's likely to have changed for you.

You may have caught me in the midst of another update- I did 2 more changes after my original update (they're in the version history but might not have been yet when you looked). The first one was the one that probably changed your dps- I retested Dire Beast today and verified that it is scaling with haste (only melee haste like pets, which means it doesn't benefit from rapid fire, focus fire or steady focus), which it wasn't when I tested it quite awhile ago. So I modified the dps calculation to reflect that, which gave it a big boost. It's overcalculating it a bit right now because I'm not accounting for dire beast lasting past the end of the fight, but I'll go back and address that later when I have more time.

The second change I made won't affect dps at all, but it will be useful for people doing a lot of tests on my site- I added a setting which allows you to turn off the stat valuation calculations (i.e. the dps per stat). This is the slowest part of the dps calculation, so by turning this off you will speed the time to get your results considerably. This setting is stored as a cookie, rather than with your saved settings, so it will persist until you turn it off or back on again.