Cheeky

This thread is going to be the storehouse for people looking for Hunter-specific help with talents, gear, pets, and strategy. This is done so that the current Theorycrafting threads aren't bloated by this kind of stuff.

Anyone is free to post their logs, armories, or experiences and ask for help with whatever is bothering you. Hopefully the more knowledgeable members of the Hunter community will chip is with advice, and links to threads where things (like the Shot Rotation) have already been explained. Don't be excessively stupid, and you should get helpful advice.

Please read the thread at least casually before posting, since no one enjoys answering the same question 5 times. I'm sure the Banhammer will make it's presence felt if things get out of hand.

Cheeky of Havoc

 

soulesschild

Cheeky, good post, I'll post a first question

Why is it that on Dr. Boom testing, I get more dps out of using a castsequence macro then when I manually time shots? Am I just a bad shot timer or is it something else? Or is your spreadsheet just that awesomeness

 

Cheeky

I'd take a look at a combat log and see if you are clipping/clobbering auto shots by your hand-timed steady casts. Comparing it to a macroed log would problem let you refine your timing a bit. Someone posted a little java (or something) tool to check times between auto shots. That should provide very useful.

By the way, I ain't volunteering to answer everyone's questions. I was just providing a thread for it. (That being said, I'll help out when I can, but I am not the world's greatest Hunter.)

Cheeky of Havoc

 

psycho_maniak

I've been looking around in the forums and i can't seem to find a direct pet comparison. This doesn't have to be necessarily limited to a specific spec, but i would prefer it be directed towards BM. I've been wondering what pet would put out the highest dps and by what margin, i've been using a cat for some time now, and wondering if i should switch to a scorpid.

 

belgann

I was wondering if there is such a thing as "too much crit" for a bm hunter.

I'm in pre-25 man gear (karazhan, heroics etc) and have 1675 ap (with AotH, and 1520 without) as well as 25.46% crit chance when I have my "raiding gear" on. I would adjust it by taking out crit/agi gems and replacing with 16 ap if I do indeed have too much crit.

 

Cheeky

Cat and Ravager are almost identical - the Ravager is 2-3 DPS ahead, at max. Wind Serpents are slightly below them, mostly due to the AI/pathing issues with Lightning Breath. Scorpid, on a poison-vulnerable boss will completely dominate any other pet, to the tune of 100-200 DPS.

There is never too much crit. RAP is the easiest thing to buff in raids (food, pots, flasks, Blessing of Might, TSA, etc.) Using a spreadsheet might show you if there is a slight benefit to re-socketing some gems to +AP, but I'm betting the gains won't justify the gem costs.

Cheeky of Havoc

 

Glaurong

If you are making geming decisions, go with Agi. Best gains for the budget of a single gem will be agility unless your hit gear is really really lacking.

Log Parser for BM Hunters (Right click, save as) - Updated 10/11/2007

 

Glaurong

If your ping is sub 100ms, it has been my experience, a macro will beat a human timing. You can simply mash a macro so many times a second to make up for bad reaction times or lag jitter.

Log Parser for BM Hunters (Right click, save as) - Updated 10/11/2007

 

Avellyr

I'd like to qualify this by saying that the wind serpent pathing issues can be circumvented by taking lightning breath off of autocast and macroing to your specials to "manually" trigger it. If you do this, and spec to provide adequate focus to your pet, wind serpents will do slightly more damage than a cat or ravager on most mobs due to the fact that LB ignores armor.

It's my understanding that as long as your latency is less than the "dead time" in your rotation, there should be no difference between the two except that a macro doesn't allow for human error. Basically, if your latency is causing you to clip shots when you hit your button as close as possible to 0 seconds on your auto shot timer, then pre-loading your steadies manually will benefit you. On the other hand, if you have some space after your steadies and before your autos, using a macro (which starts the steady at 0 seconds) will be identical to manually threading. My macro works smoothly with my typical ping of 200-300 and a 3.0 speed bow.

 

senior toasted bread

I have a castsequence macro hotkeyed and steady bound to mousewheel, I use the macro when in not under any haste but when I get haste procs I find that the macro doesn't preform as well as manually threading. Also the macro seems to have some problems with rapid target switching(Lady Vashj p2), sometimes it wont cast the steady shot until an autoshot fires. Best advice is test them both and find the one that works for you.

 

Carlaena

Spending hard earned gold on swapping 1%crit for an extra 40AP would gain you nothing. Your DPS would almost certainly not budge an inch.

8 agil and 16 AP, for all intensive purposes, are almost identical in terms of DPS output. Even with Kings, they are pretty much exactly the same.

 

Drrakkainen

Hey

Since it's hunters help thread I can write my first elitejerk post here so welcome
To start with I've read most of BM hunter raiding thread, and may other infos here, I have to live with 250-350 latency (I play on US realms from Europe)

my armory profile
and log from our first Gruul kill (we're very casual guild due to this Euro on US servers issue)

My basic question is, what else in my gear I need to improve? What skills I'm overusing, using too little?
I know some of my gems need to be changed but I used the one I had from heroics to make my MM -> BM transfer less painful
I still need some Kara loot to improve my hitrating and get rid of that ancient scope but is there a blue gear I've skipped, etc.

Thanks in advance for any comments

 

soulesschild

Oh man if someone could provide that, it would be an immense help Any takers?

 

Carlaena

If you're putting out 350k on Gruul, you don't have a great deal to worry about. Your personal dps looks nice. You hit a streak of very bad luck with your steady shot critrate, nothing you can do about that.

I do notice that your pet died twice though, by cavein. You may want to consider taking two points out of endurance, sticking them in Improved Mend Pet, and use it more liberally. Especially if you don't have Seal of Light or Improved Leader of the Pack to help you. If your pet gets caught in cavein, pull it out.

 

Drrakkainen

That was my 5th try on Gruul with this build, now I have pet attack and pet return bind to my mouse so I call it back faster, but that's something one have to learn and practice. Other thing I still can't get used to is shorter range and fixing KC between shots.
I was a bit worried about so slow weapon but I guess it suits my latency and manual timings better than something faster, and I can pass Prince bow to someone with greater need, provided it'll ever drop

and a side note, my performance as a hunter after like two weeks of reading this forum, trying things, and doing test has improved big way! you guys here are doing exelent for what you have my thanks

 

lucrative

Question: As a BM Hunter, how would the Dragonspine Trophy effect my dps? A link to a thread that discusses this in depth would be extremely appreciated.

 

Fimbo

There is some good info on this in other places.

Petopia is a good explination of pets in general:
Petopia: A visual guide to hunter pets in the World of Warcraft!
But you probably know all that!

However - the BRK Column on WoW insider did a really good theorycraft session on the "whole scorpid thing" here:
BigRedKitty: The Whole Scorpid Thing - WOW Insider

Including a really explanation good of why to Trinket your heart out before sending Mr Snippy to attack.


However for me i think this is clearly a bug, and i'm expecting a hot fix any time now - so i'm not going to bother getting 6 levels of happiness on a Scorpid for him to be nerfed!

 

Carlaena

I've got Kill Command attached to Arcane Shot in a macro. Both have similar cooldowns, I find its the least disruptive way to integrate it into my rotation. I only ever touch it when both are primed. For mana efficiency its a big drain, but it sure shows pretty numbers when I use it. I don't have the mana to spam it every time it's alive, but I squeeze it in whenever I feel I can.

Disclaimer: This may not be great advice.

 

Drrakkainen

That's what I'm going to aim at.
Another question, what do do when shammy pop bloodlust? I usualy press rapidfire and if quickshots proc I just sit and watch the show, hitting KC/Arcane but mostly at random because I can hardly see my castbar and it's with 3.0 weapon, I can hardly imagine what would it be with faster one..

 

Talyx

I was wondering about the effective use of the Don Santos Hunting Rifle. I was recently trolling the official hunter forums when I came by this guy who posted a WWS of Morogrim where he achieved 1477 DPS with an optimal group makeup and using the Don Santos Rifle. What surprised me the most was that he was still using 5 pieces of Naxx gear and a DFT. The rifle he was using proc'd 15 times over 8:36. To give some comparison, quick shots proc'd 13 times. So doing some math, the buff was up at most 34.4% of the time (can't see if it proc'd while the buff was already active, though).

So my main question is, does anyone have any thorough testing done on this weapon and can give a reasonable PPM rate? If the buff is active ~33% of the time, thats about 83 RAP over the entire fight. Would it be worth using this gun over a higher DPS weapon?

And here's the log I found: Tobiah - WWS

 

Carlaena

Ignore his gun and how much it procs. The single most important factor in him achieving this level of DPS on this encounter, is his pet management. Somehow he has managed to get his Scorpid to put out 617DPS over the entire fight. With that level of damage from his pet he could stand there and just autoshoot for the entire fight, and still break 1k.

 

Cheeky

I did some analysis here on it. Didn't get a whole lot of feedback, so it's just one Troll's word. It's modeled in the spreadsheet, so you can always check for yourself.

I've found The Don to have a 1.7 ppm rate, and I've seen it proc off of both auto and specials. It's an amazing weapon, I use it in any low-mobility fight. It has (as far as I can tell) no cooldown either, so you get chain procs fairly often. If you can stand still and unload for large periods of time, it's probably the best ranged weapon in the game for a BM Hunter.

The Don has a great synergy with Scorpids. Since you'll most likely get a proc in about 13 seconds it's worth waiting for the Santos' Blessing buff and then starting a Poison stack.

Cheeky of Havoc

 

Mikari

Here's a WWS from our first Morogrim kill Mikari - WWS

I know I clobbered way too many auto shots and it will be something I'll fix for next time, low fps during AOE phases and crappy latency didn't help.

Does anyone have any idea roughly how much DPS I lost due to my rotation and any suggestions regarding my gear/spec?

Here's also a Lurker Below parse Mikari - WWS adding this because I think the DPS seems low considering my gear, there's a Gruul Parse in there too if anyone has any suggestions regarding that.

Thanks.

 

lilwolfe

Since we've got this thread going, I'll dive right in!

Ranged Weapon - I've been trying to figure out what ranged weapon to go for next. I'm using the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle right now and I love it! Last night, after about the 35th killing of Prince in Kara, he dropped the Sunfury - and when I plugged it into the spreadsheet, it showed a ~20dps DROP! Does that one/tenth of a second really make that much difference? I was floored.

Helm - I am still stuck in the Helm of Desolation. I would love T4 Helm, but as noted above, Prince really doesn't have much fondness for me and I am at wits end with running Kara. Outside of T5 (we've not downed Leo or Vashj yet) what would be a good upgrade for me? Using the spreadsheet, ... it doesn't look like much.

Shot Rotation - I used to time my shots by sound, but lately I'd seen my numbers dip so I grabbed quartz and started using that. Sure, I can NAIL the stupid rotation... when I stare with my eyes glued on the freaking cast bar. Doing better dps is awesome and stuff, but I'd love to see what the encounters actually look like, ya know. (Some exagerration here) What can be done to free up my having to stare at racing cast bars? Any mods or tips out there?

Kill Command - I don't use macros (but am willing to try some) so I am curious how best to fit in KC when I have the opportunity. When I use it after a steady it lags up the auto and gets me all flustered. (I really am starting to blame these bars.... they control me!)

Scorpid Poison - Do you always wait for a Hourglass Proc to get things going? I don't see mine proc as much as I want it to, so normally just pop Brooch, Bloodfury, Bestial Wrath, and Scorpid Poison Rank 4. Sadly that only nets me poison ticks in the 550-650 range. Is that about the norm?

Ok that's it for now.

 

Greenpiggy

Bloodlust reduces the Global Cooldown proportionately, so continuing auto/steady spam is your best bet assuming you can adjust to the speed well enough.