Great information so far, thanks for all the work. It's helping me figure out why as BM my Sunfury was performing almost as well as my WSR.

However, for you gurus, let's throw some questions out there....

DST and the new shot mechanics? Will my Sunfury surpass the WSR in theory.

Second question is this, before I was getting more DPS using a 1:1 priority by replacing Steadies with Arcane and Multi. Is it possible to still do this while taking advantage of the new shot mechanics?

Ok, I have read this entire thread and I was wondering if there is any sort of consensus here as to what works best. It seems that the tests that everyone runs come up with different statistics every time. I was a MM hunter doing mostly manual shot weaving and having a fine time with it (around 1k dps). However, the spreadsheet says that I can get roughly 150dps more out of a BM build. So, I thought I would give it a go (Now that I think I might actually be able to keep my pet alive). So my questions are as follows:

- What IS the best macro?
/castsequence one line macro vs /cast 2 line macro
!Auto Shot first vs Steady Shot first in the macro
Should I bother trying to weave in Arcane? (Multi seems like a waste without the MM barrage talents unless you have 3 targets). I could pick up the Talon of Alar if that is the case.

- Sunfury or WSR (I have both). I would be using the Smuggler's Ammo Pouch or Ancient Sinew with the standard 15% haste.
- Should I still be using the DST?

Here is a link to my armory page if any other gear makes any difference: Khimaria. Just to sum up, I am hit capped, have 1923 RAP and a little over 25% crit unbuffed in the BM spec. Att speed is 1.93 sec without DST proc or IAotH.

Thanks in advance for any advice. I love playing a hunter, but there is only so much you can do by "feel" and I suck at the number crunching.

Much appreciated

BAH. Just had my hopes of new rotations dashed. Read earlier on the 2.4 changes on World of Raids :: Index that haste was being changed to affect the GCD, then got home to read that it won't apply to ranged attacks :S

That's so mean. I may be wrong, but I can't think of any class that would benefit more from hasted GCDs than hunters.

I asked myself sort of the same question a while ago: What is better sunfury or WSR. And it all seems to be really dependant on how often you prok IAotH .

Seeing you got a speed below 2 seconds on WSR.

I think you would get the best dps/dpm from doing your rotation manually.
Or by using a macro like this 1 .

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill command
/cast Steady shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

If you are going to do it manual.
You can just spam SS and use KC after you steady fired and before you start your next steady. Or just spam the macro above after you manually started auto.
If I am right this will result in an almost perfect 1:1 shot rotation.

After about 0.9 seconds after you started steady shot it will fire.
And it already triggered GCD so you can’t start a next SS before it expires. So you “wait” 0.6 seconds and than you can start your next shot. BUT because everything casted 0.5 seconds before your auto shot fires get postponed till after your auto shot. You will get a rotation that behaves like you got 0 MS (ping)

Auto 1,93 sec
SS 0,9 sec (but triggers GCD)
KC instant (doesn’t trigger GCD)


0-------------------0,9--------1,5--------1,93
Auto -------------------------------------fires
SS-----------------fires
GCD-------------------------ends

This gives

1 ______________________________________
2 ______________________________________
3 ______________________________________


1 = your auto shot bar. Start 0 → 1,93 end
2 = your SS bar. Start 0 → 0,9 end .0,9 → 1,5 is GCD.1,5 → 1,93 is in the 0,5 sec zone before your auto shot fire
3 = your casting / GCD bar. Starts 0 → 1,5 end GCD 1,5 → 1,93 is your favorite moment. Because now you can cast everything you want to cast after your auto fire’s. And it will act if you got 0 MS and it WONT clip your auto shot.

So this is spammable . But if you fire in the red zone it wont do anything. And if you fire in the green zone it WILL do something. But only after you fired auto shot.

The only problem is if you got a speed higher than 2 seconds (like sunfury). You will get a small gap between the green zone and the red zone. And if you press your SS button in that gap it will start casting than and clip your auto shot.

So Khimaria. If you want something spamable like a macro. WSR would be the best choice since you will get 2,07 sec speed on sunfury if I am right. And thus be able to clip your auto shot by spamming a macro.

Sunfury is a 4.2 dps 4 agi and 2 ap up. But it fire’s 0,14 seconds slower than WSR . And is unspamable macro wise.

But if you can manage to get 72 haste rating (47 more) . sunfury wont clip your auto shot . Or if you got IAOTH and prok it,than auto shot won’t clip either. Or a DST prok will also make you not clip auto shot.
Atm this is your speed .

(don’t foget you also have rapid fire and sometimes bloodlust/heroisem.)
You get your speed by using this formula btw .
Base speed/(1.2*1.15*(total haste rating /15,7 /100 +1)
1,2 is from sperpent swiftness 1,15 from your ammo pouch or quiver. And the rest from haste. Other effects like IAOTH is another 1,15 .)


Well this show’s that sunfury leaves you more time to plan your shot’s. (Or basically how longer your green bit is. how less you got to smash your button to get it right .)
So than the big question is. how much time do you need ? And how much of the time do you have IAotH up or DST (if you use it )
And how often will you have both up.
Basically if you got both up .You got a little dilemma. Do you keep trying to use KC/SS and clip your auto shot? Or do you stop SSing and waste dps ? Or do you skip 1 auto in your SS rotation. AU+SS AU AU+SS AU AU+SS AU like this. And still waste dps ? . It depends on your MS tbh. I got 26 MS normally. So I go for spamming SS and clip auto a bit. But if you got high MS I think skipping 1 auto will be the best alternative. Also if you for example take WSR and have DST up . And you don’t make it to spam your macro on the green bit of 0,1 sec it's no disaster (not big at least unless you got really high MS) it just means you will need to cast it after auto. And than you will get latency effects.

So I am afraid that after the numbercrunching you still got to do it by “feel”


Personally id go for
- Manually auto shot. And the macro mentioned above.
- sunfury since you got more time to respond . Especially if you got haste proks up. (and just ignore the 1 or 2 times when you clip your auto shot because you spam your macro exactly on the wrong 1/100 of a second when you aren’t hasted by DST/IAotH )
- I am not sure about arc shot. But I guess that if you fill in your stats in a spreadsheet it will give a answer. (Anyway SS does scale 5% better with AP than arc shot. But I don’t know when it will get better. Since arc shot is nature damage if I am right. And get migrated on another way than physical damage)
- And for DST the same. If you are going to use arc shot a lot I guess talon of al’ar would be better. But if not it really depends on with what you are going to replace it with.(And on : what your reaction/spam time is )

Sorry for the long post (a big wall of text now I look back at it -_-)
I hope it helped a bit. And I hope that I didn’t make a stupid mistake or so. (Since my main isn’t a hunter I am kind of new on hunter theory crafting)

I haven't seen this brought up, on the 4 steadies the last one is only .5 seconds after the 3rd one. Anyone have a guess? Also I am having a problem with my macro, it makes kill command "stick" after battle. I cannot feed my pet, or MD, or use anything with the gear symbol on mouseover. I've tried a few variations, next I am going to get rid of Kill Command all together. (By stick I mean the KC is highlighted in my button bar like Autoshot, but is greyed out).

08:14'33.480 Ivaldi's Auto Shot hits Amani'shi Warbringer for 744
08:14'34.590 Ivaldi's Steady Shot crits Amani'shi Warbringer for 1891
08:14'35.771 Ivaldi's Steady Shot hits Amani'shi Warbringer for 779
08:14'41.691 Ivaldi's Auto Shot crits Amani Bear Mount for 1562
08:14'43.178 Ivaldi's Steady Shot hits Amani Bear Mount for 620
08:14'45.923 Ivaldi's Steady Shot crits Amani Bear Mount for 1586
08:14'47.538 Ivaldi's Steady Shot crits Amani Bear Mount for 1551
08:14'48.073 Ivaldi's Steady Shot hits Amani Bear Mount for 637
08:14'56.880 Ivaldi's Auto Shot hits Amani'shi Axe Thrower for 550
08:14'57.958 Ivaldi's Steady Shot hits Amani'shi Axe Thrower for 586
08:14'58.201 Ivaldi's Steady Shot hits Amani'shi Axe Thrower for 610

It's the same for every one of my 4 steadies, I can link the WWS if you like.

I had the same thing with my hunter alt a while ago. I don’t know how I got rid of it. (Not sure but I thought I switched to another macro and it stopped) But I do know it will “unbug” if you tab out of wow. (Or at least it worked for me).
I also noticed it only bugged for me if I used KC while my pet was to far away from my target.

But what macro are you using? Is it a macro with /cast !auto shot ?
And what is your MS ? Around 35 or so?

And also 1 thing seems very strange. You where able to get 4 SS in a row. How did you do that? Did you cancel auto shot?

This isn't an issue with KC, although for hunters KC tends to trigger it. Info I got from a GM-tech that responded to an in-game ticket is that this is a bug that Blizzard is aware of. Its an auto shoot bug that also affects wands. He said he was hoping for a hot fix but that he wasn't sure when it would be fixed, possibly not until 2.4. Until then, I've had to stop using KC because it sticks for me pretty much every time. Sometimes if you spam Steady Shot until you crit and it activates KC again, it'll unstick. Relogging, reloading UI, etc., doesn't work for me. Only exiting the game and restarting it does.

There's been a couple of threads about that KC sticking problem on the blizzard forums. For most people relogging fixes it (/script reloading doesn't). Some people get it fixed by sending their pet into battle again too.

Relogging has worked for me every time. Very annoying, but not too frequent so far (I mostly use a plain castsequence macro though).

Well well this answers my question about why i randomly cant FD and get an error that spell isnt ready. I'm pretty sure my KC button is getting stuck not allowing me to FD. My guild leader has changed my guild notes to "What is FD?". I tried to tell everyone i cant FD but no one believed me. I have a feeling it has to do with macroing vs manual weaving also. I macro with my N52 gamepad so i jsut hit one button and it hit my macro until i hit that button again.

Apparently, trying to queue up Raptor Strike is supposed to clear the issue. I haven't tried this myself, but it might be worth testing.

Seems to work. Maybe I'm missing something, my head is kind of spinning.

I'm not even seeing the 4 steadies in a row I normally see. I DO still see the "Another Action is in Progress", which is quite annoying.

Actually I take that back, still testing, I do see the stream of steadies sometimes, but it fixes my KC being stuck.

I wish there weren't so many different threads on this. There like 3 on the WoW forums at least.

I found I had similar problems when using the following (I have imp. Arcane shot btw)
/castsequence !Auto shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot

Where, depdening on a number of factors the autoshot can fire a fraction before your arcane shot and out of sequence because autoshot is fired on a set timer and not directly fired by the macro. This autoshot firing a fraction of a second before you can get the Arcane shot off means the /castsequence line is now waiting for an autoshot, and the next autoshot is still 2.5 seconds away.

I switched to:
/castsequence !Auto shot, Steady Shot
/castrandom Arcane Shot

and found this made a big difference. The /castsequence is then only concerned with sequencing two shots and doesn't care if the auto shot goes off a split second before or after the arcane shot and will carry on with the correct sequence.

That is what I use now since I was having the same problem. I added ",Multi-Shot" to the random part when I am not near CC. I find that it works better than the old /castsequence macros.

But, if you really want a full sequence macro for 1:1.5, you can just take out a few !Auto Shot parts. I.e.:

/castsequence !Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, !Auto Shot, Steady Shot, !Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Multi-Shot, !Auto Shot, Steady Shot

can become:

/castsequence !Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, !Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Multi-Shot, Steady Shot

This works because the auto shot will fire during the GCD of the arcane and multi-shots no matter what you do, so there is no reason to explicitly force it in the macro. Now, it won't get stuck if the auto shot goes off before the arcane or multi by accident.

BTW, I've tried both this full 1:1.5 macro I just posted and the /castrandom one that Juggernaught posted and found the /castrandom one to do better DPS. In theory, it doesn't make sense, but in practice it works. So, give Dr. Boom a try and see what you come up with.

I've noticed when I was testing that the /castrandom has a delay between each shot. For example, I tried;

/cast !Auto Shot
/cast Steady Shot

and

/castsequence !Auto shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

And there is a very noticeable gap between each steady shot firing when using /castsequence (~0.2 seconds from what I can make out). The same is true with the arcane/multi in the macro I used in my last post. The /cast and /castrandom seem to not incur this delay and I now get arcane shots firing almost instantly after the Steady Shot has fired which can only be a good thing for minimising clipping.

I agree. I've noticed this delay as well when using /castsequence.

Like I said in my last note, using /castrandom over /castsequence ups my DPS a lot even when using the same 1:1.5 rotation.

i saw this on forum. i am not sure if this is true or not, can anyone explain

another hunter says if you shoot faster than 1.5 speed you miss your auto shots if you fire special shots. not sure whic h is right

thanks

I think this is what you looking for

/castsequence reset=2 Steady Shot, !Auto Shot
/cast [target=pettarget] Kill Command
/cast [target=pettarget] Lightning Breath
/castrandom Arcane Shot

I should not be able to cast auto shots every 2 seconds with a 3 second bow, but I am able to.

I may have brought this up before over a month ago, but I really think it needs some looking at.

I have a 3.0 speed bow, as a marksman with no speed increases other than quiver, my auto shots fire immediately after steady shots(weird!), every time (with the .5 sec delay of course), with one exception, if I cast aimed shot, then immediately cast steady shot, the full time required to cast the autoshot after the aimed shot occurs(2.61 sec, as it should behave). I see a slightly longer delay than .5 seconds when using Aimed -> Steady -> Auto. Aimed shot seems to act as a hard reset that overrides steady shot, otherwise steady shot queues up my auto shot to fire at t=2 every time.

Now, am I bugged, and have been since learning Steady Shot, or does anyone else experience this?

Pseudographical Example:
( - is .1 sec, | is 1 sec, assume first | is t=0 sec, > represents an action taking place, . is a space separator)

Casting Aimed first:
Steady........>............>Auto..........
|---------|---------|---------|----

No Aimed Shot:
Steady........>....>Auto..................(weird!)
|---------|---------|---------|----

Please provide a time-stamped combat log of this. What you think you see may not be what is actually happening.

Will do ASAP

What are your goals? Raiding? PvP?

If raiding then you should abandon that macro completely... if PvP then I have no idea.

The delay is occurring because Aimed Shot resets your Auto Shot cooldown. What this means is, after the aimed fires, you have to wait the entire 3.0 (minus haste) seconds before the next auto shot. If you are attempting to work Aimed Shot into a DPS roation DO NOT DO THIS, you will be killing your DPS. If you're doing it as either the first attack on a mob before going into your rotation, or as the first shot for a misdirect, you have time for 2 specials before that auto shot fires.