Shot Rotation Illustrated - Page 2

Harwin · 06/14/07, 3:45 PM

Originally Posted by Rephaim

Serpent Sting can be counted just like Arcane Shot, except with a 15 second cooldown. If that is the case, Serpent sting does more damage per 1.5 seconds than Arcane shot, 440DPS, which is also higher than Steady Shot.

Of course that depends on having an open debuff slot, but for the time it takes to cast, Serpent Sting is better than Arcane Shot.

I also like to consider it as an arcane with a 15 second cooldown, but it tends to do less damage than arcane shot.

It doesn't crit and receives no bonus from AP buffs. When I was explaining to one of our hunters why he shouldn't use serpent sting, the average damage he did from arcane was greater than the average damage from serpent sting, factoring everything in.

It might not be the case for BM hunters and the significantly lower AP but it's not great even then.

Huntemup · 06/14/07, 5:29 PM

Originally Posted by Rephaim

Serpent Sting can be counted just like Arcane Shot, except with a 15 second cooldown. If that is the case, Serpent sting does more damage per 1.5 seconds than Arcane shot, 440DPS, which is also higher than Steady Shot.

Of course that depends on having an open debuff slot, but for the time it takes to cast, Serpent Sting is better than Arcane Shot.

In addition to requiring a debuff slot, Serpant Sting cant crit, and thus won't proc KC or GFTT focus regen. KC and "free" GFTT attacks are often overlooked when calculating dps. Ignoring crit mechanics for a crit dependant class is not effective modeling. Mortal Shots + Slaying is not insignificant.

Xantcha · 06/14/07, 5:39 PM

How would Ping affect these shot rotations?

Our Hunters are pretty horrible, but we are on an Oceanic server with Oceanic players. At best we average at 300ms, and usually worse. Considering timing is so important to hunter DPS, would this adversely affect our hunters? Honestly I've never seen our hunters do over 700DPS, and we're up to Vashj.

Huntemup · 06/14/07, 6:08 PM

Originally Posted by Xantcha

How would Ping affect these shot rotations?

Our Hunters are pretty horrible, but we are on an Oceanic server with Oceanic players. At best we average at 300ms, and usually worse. Considering timing is so important to hunter DPS, would this adversely affect our hunters? Honestly I've never seen our hunters do over 700DPS, and we're up to Vashj.

Ping is just as important as it is for any other direct damage class. 700dps is low though.
Are you stacking raid groups so that they get some synergy? Are their spec's reasonable and gear comparable?

And most importantly are you sure you have pet data merged into each hunter's dps? Its amazing how many people dont, and think that their hunters suck.

Grimlok · 06/14/07, 8:08 PM

700 dps does indeed sound a little low, is pet data being merged with owners?

jarlelin · 06/14/07, 9:23 PM

1. - Serpent definitely needs to be represented as an instant with gcd having a cooldown of 15s. However, it's inability to crit makes it vastly inferior to all the other shots at your disposal and shouold really only be used if you are on the move and cant perform any of the other shots.

2. - All shots should be represented as having "listed" cast time plus two times latency. Particularly instants should be modeled as having a cast time of two times latency. This makes it drastically more difficult to perform complex shot rotations in situations with high latency. (Unless you use a stopcasting macro of course, but this messes up my auto-shot-timer-bar, so screw that.)

3. - Something that you generally failed to mention in this otherwise impressive "guide" is the actual cast time of auto shot. The auto shot has a cooldown of [cast time - 0,5s] and an automatically initiated cast time of 0,5s. This is particularly noticeable in your diagram: "Firing anew Steady Shot too Soon", where your first auto shot should be extended to finish 0,5 seconds (plus latency) after that second steady shot finishes. And if you fire off that third steady shot as soon as you do there, and keep doing so, you will, in fact, not fire a single auto shot at all.

Edit: I feel your guide lacked a note on multishot after its intial mention in the intro. The differences between the "instant" cast time of arcane and the 0,5s cast time of multishot really is important to note when planning a difficult shot rotation.

PS. As for number #3 in my own post: I feel that this is the most important fact missed by some beginning hunters and should really be explained in some detail. And as I really liked your diagrams I feel they could properly be utilized to represent this problem.

broneal · 06/14/07, 9:24 PM

how does intimidation fit into this rotation for a BM hunter? SS comes with a bonus dmg for dazed(or stunned cant remember) targets. just curious.

jarlelin · 06/14/07, 9:38 PM

Intimidation is mostly a utility and will not be represented in a typical dps cycle as so. It does however suffer from the gcd, and will in most cases be substituting another shot such as SS (as BM) or arcane/multi.

It's long cooldown (1 minute) and the pet's annoying tendency to miss on any occasion the buff has been put on it, makes it less than ideal for anything other than an o-shit-button comparative to scatter shot.

I don't actually know if the extra daze-damage from SS triggers from intimidation stun, but general intuition and the fact that I haven't noticed anything to that effect earlier makes me fairly certain that it does not.

lythrdskynrd · 06/15/07, 2:05 AM

Originally Posted by jarlelin

1. - Serpent definitely needs to be represented as an instant with gcd having a cooldown of 15s. However, it's inability to crit makes it vastly inferior to all the other shots at your disposal and shouold really only be used if you are on the move and cant perform any of the other shots.

2. - All shots should be represented as having "listed" cast time plus two times latency. Particularly instants should be modeled as having a cast time of two times latency. This makes it drastically more difficult to perform complex shot rotations in situations with high latency. (Unless you use a stopcasting macro of course, but this messes up my auto-shot-timer-bar, so screw that.)

3. - Something that you generally failed to mention in this otherwise impressive "guide" is the actual cast time of auto shot. The auto shot has a cooldown of [cast time - 0,5s] and an automatically initiated cast time of 0,5s. This is particularly noticeable in your diagram: "Firing anew Steady Shot too Soon", where your first auto shot should be extended to finish 0,5 seconds (plus latency) after that second steady shot finishes. And if you fire off that third steady shot as soon as you do there, and keep doing so, you will, in fact, not fire a single auto shot at all.

Edit: I feel your guide lacked a note on multishot after its intial mention in the intro. The differences between the "instant" cast time of arcane and the 0,5s cast time of multishot really is important to note when planning a difficult shot rotation.

PS. As for number #3 in my own post: I feel that this is the most important fact missed by some beginning hunters and should really be explained in some detail. And as I really liked your diagrams I feel they could properly be utilized to represent this problem.

Thanks for the feedback (everyone) this particular post seems to sum up the input and feedback

just to make sure I understand the 0.5 second autoshot cast time correctly ...

with a bow speed of 2.8 (ignoring haste) I'd get:
2.8 second countup -> 0.5 second cast -> lag -> next autoshot

it will take a few days till I'm able to require the guide with that ... but will take some of the advice I've read

Sarevok · 06/15/07, 2:14 AM

actually not a bad post im rather suprised, however 2.44 seems a little fast more like 2.5 or 2.6 though it doesnt really all the much in the end, also, after multi technically it should only be a 1 second global since there is that "cast time" on it

Wensleydale · 06/15/07, 3:37 AM

Originally Posted by lythrdskynrd

just to make sure I understand the 0.5 second autoshot cast time correctly ...

with a bow speed of 2.8 (ignoring haste) I'd get:
2.8 second countup -> 0.5 second cast -> lag -> next autoshot

Not quite. Think of autoshot not as having a "cast time", but as needing some "breathing room." A 2.8 speed bow, left on autoattack, will still fire every 2.8 seconds, for the most part regardless of lag. But all special attacks need to be used before 2.3 seconds. Suppose steady shot finishes 2.6 seconds into your autoshot cycle: autoshot will be delayed to the 3.1 second mark.

You could re-draw your autoshot bar: instead of a single 2.8 second bar, split it into two bars. Alternate a 0.5 second bar and a 2.3 second bar in the autoshot row, where the autoshot damage occurs at the right edge of the 0.5 second bar. The rule would be that none of the orange up-and-down damage arrows can point at the 0.5 second bar--the little bar would be pushed to the right (a delayed autoshot) so that the damage arrow and the little bar no longer overlap. I wish I could construct an image as nice as yours to illustrate what I'm trying to explain!

just doing autoshot:
 -- --------- -- --------- -- --------- --
|.5|   2.3   |.5|   2.3   |.5|   2.3   |
 -- --------- -- --------- -- --------- --
   ^            ^            ^          
   |            |            |




autoshot+steadyshot. first SS OK, second one delays AS:


                         delay
 -- --------- -- ---------   -- --------- --
|  |         |  |         | |  |         |
 -- --------- -- ---------   -- --------- --
     ------           ------ 
    |  SS  |         |  SS  |
     ------           ------ 
   ^       ^    ^           ^  ^
   |       |    |           |  |

Ideally your special shots would never butt against the autoshot warm-up time, but I suppose it's better DPS to delay autoshot by a couple tenths of a second if it allows for an additional special shot. IANAH (I am not a hunter) so I can't say for sure.

Enova · 06/15/07, 5:45 AM

With the 0.5 second hidden timer to auto-shot, and kill command able to get in it's way, wouldn't it be optimal to always kill command after an auto-shot, or simply along with your steady shot?

This macro could do it...

/cast Kill Command
/stopcasting
/cast Steady Shot

Well, the macro i'm using (as a survival build, though, but i find that irrelevant, unless the BM haste talent may have some sidefects i didn't forsee) is something in the lines of

/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/cast [exists,target=pettarget] Kill Command

From what i can tell, it's quite effective (especially that KC doesn't trigger a global cooldown anymore), and it will not allow for firing a steady shot before the autoshot cycle has been finished. Also, if either of the shots crits, it will automatically proc a KC.

EDIT: The complete macro is

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/cast [exists,target=pettarget] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

lythrdskynrd · 06/15/07, 5:56 AM

Originally Posted by Sarevok

also, after multi technically it should only be a 1 second global since there is that "cast time" on it

if you look at the first image (basic introduction to the shots)
you'll see that they all take up the same amount of space (150 pixels)

I can see the confusion because I'd created and labelled a "GCD object" and then just laid the shots on top of them so multishot is 50 pixels of red and 100 pixels of blue meaning the the actual displayed GCD for Multi Shot is correct ... but it is mislabelled

The more I look at it the more the 'hidden cast time' of Autoshot bothers me

I'm sure lag issues will do the same as soon as I wrap my head around & fully understand how it works.

Overall (and after the frist few drafts) I knew that it wouldn't be a guide for the "high end" hunter ... but more a general introduction and overview post that clearly shows the main issues of shot rotation ... basically a young hunter's first post.

Not to excuse inaccuracies of course - but to limit the scope of the document (advanced hunters can go to Shot Rotation Illustrated 'part deux'/'redux')

I'll probably get time to revisit the diagrams next wednesday or thursday

Xoran · 06/15/07, 6:11 AM

Hmm this just got me thinking again... Does the .5s hidden casttime on autoshot really is present after steadyshot?

Because if it is, under ideal circumstances for auto/steady-spam you won't want a weapon faster 2.0-speed. And that would contradict other people commenting on "cutting deadtime" in auto/steady-spam and also my playing around with Cheeky's spreadsheet.

Just wondering... *scratching head*

Lactose · 06/15/07, 6:41 AM

Originally Posted by Xoran

Hmm this just got me thinking again... Does the .5s hidden casttime on autoshot really is present after steadyshot?

Can you spam Steady Shot like a mad-man and have Auto Shot fire inbetween (no haste effects)?
No, you can't. Hidden cast time of Auto Shot proved.

Because if it is, under ideal circumstances for auto/steady-spam you won't want a weapon faster 2.0-speed. And that would contradict other people commenting on "cutting deadtime" in auto/steady-spam and also my playing around with Cheeky's spreadsheet.

The cast time of Steady Shot is affected by hastes. You need the 0.5 sec timer once Steady Shot finishes its cast (which, again, is dependant on hastes).