this is wrong!
i did not read any further, because of this first statement!

the GCD is triggered when you start casting your SS!

so without haste it means your GCD runs out, when the SS goes off and you are able to cast the next SS immediately after!
this has nothing to do with autoshots and their frequency i.e. speed!
with enough haste and a fast weapon it is easy to get an autoshotspeed of under 1.5 sec!
why is this not ideal?
since GCD will always be 1.5 sec you then have to go for an 1:2 (1 SS for 2 AS) rotation if you want to prevent autoshots getting clipped.
beware: the casttime of SS also goes down with haste, but never the GCD so you will start casting SS - after GCD is down again - right in the middle of your autocycle and clipping it!
vimes, capt

i know that this is a dumbass question but i need some help. I have used all of the macros that do everything and i cant get alot of them to work. the only thing that the cycle ones do for me is cast one spell. i thought it would cast like 3 so i wouldnt have to click and mash buttons. so is there one that i can just hit once and it does something like steady shot then arcane shot then auto shot then others and on and on? or is it that they only do one thing and that i have to mash buttons?

You cannot cast multiple spells in one macro with one keypress, unless there is no wait involved between the two. A good example would be our Auto shot->Steady shot macro, as turning on auto shot does not invoke the GCD.

So your answer is no, 1 hardware event for 1 in game event. You must spam your macro if you wish to spam steady shot.

the /castsequence commands are the closest thing you can do to order your shots the way you want. You still need to press the button multiple times for the reason above (1 command for one game event), however, castsequence, I believe, forces shots to come off in a certain order unless x seconds elapses before any command is given. You can set the value of x in your reset = x part of the macro.

Problem, of course, is that cast sequence forces a shot order, even if those shots aren't ready and also prevents you from changing your rotation on the fly.

But it would limit the number of steady shots you could get out correct? No more than 1 every 1.5 second + latency? Unbelievable how far from the truth I was *sigh*.

How does latency play into server side queuing? We can send the next steady shot as soon as the GCD is done, so as long as lag is relatively stable it gets removed from the equation afaik. With 3:2 the limiting factor would be how soon after the GCD is up you click/press your steady macro.

It's no lie faster speed weapons seem to do better on the spreadsheet but i wouldn't necessarily agree with it 100% of the time.

I was contemplating which bow to use the other day. Crossbow of relentless strikes or the one of Archi. Whilst on paper the crossbow clearly surpasses it. After a fair few Brutallus runs comparing both rotations and both weapons. 3:2 with the 3.0 speed bow still came out better by about by alot. Generally i'm put into the tank group as my raid has horrible physical synergy and pretty much the only "buff" i get is battle shout and the benefits of a retribution paladin. With the crossbow i seemed to be capped at around 1900-2000dps going all out which i think is fair considering my latency/raid composition and yet 3:2 with the archi bow generally came to about 2100 dps.

Having the slower bow just seems to make haste effects work so much better for me, especially considering my latency as i lose about 0.4 seconds waiting for the server to recognise iv'e shot an auto and can now cast a steady. I generally play with an ms of 400+. I understand the spreadsheet factors in latency and it still had crossbow come out on top, yet testing, at least for me seems in favour of the 3:2 on a slower weapon.

At the end of the day no spreadsheet can tell you what works best for you. If your wondering why your don santos comes out on top on the spreadsheet i suggest going to Dr.Boom and trying it out for yourself, thats the only true way that you can see if it's better or not, especially if you have a high latency.

Greetings. I have spent the last half hour searching the forums for a write up on the DPS increase gained from Survival spec compared to BM in a raid environment, taking into account the loss of personal DPS from switching from BM to survival and the DPS gain based on agility and the numbers of physical DPS in the raid. I am not able to find the post (I remember reading it somewhere on these forums!) Could anybody please point me in the right direction? Thank you.

I Need Help regarding my speccing from BM to Survival spec

I have read various forum posts/articles but i need more info and want your comments / suggestions so here goes:

- I am joining a guild that farms Hyjal / BT and is now doing sunwell (2nd boss).
- Guild has a BM/MM hunter and i will be the survival hunter
- I started out being a BM hunter and i have never tried survival/MM ever.
- I was told to respec to a survival hunter to help the raid
- I am a 375 Leatherworker (Drums)
- I use cheeky's spreadsheet
- I have 2600 arena points to be then used on the S4 Head / S4 Chest and S3 Axe
- My armory link : http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...oilfang&n=Joms

- Shot rotation macro I use:

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


Questions:

1) Given my current gear, should i respec to 7/20/34 or 20/41 or something else. And if so, can you link me a the true 7/20/34 and 20/41? (ive seen 3x different 20/41 spec now...)

2) What macro should i now use? Do i still spam the macro i posted above or should i use another one? Do SV hunters spam macros much like BM or do they play it differently?

3) Do i need to get a wind serpent for my pet now or should i stick with my ravager?

4) Do i go for 3.0 speed bows rather than the badge one (2.8) for survival?

5) Could you post me some links that would help me understand how a survival hunter should be properly played in Hyjal/BT/sunwell

Thanks in advance.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Is it worth swapping my current Abacus of Violent Odds @ 2054rap with 25.16crit as a beastmaster, doing a 3:2 with a 1.96s attack speed to Hourglass of the Unraveller if it makes me go to 1990rap 26.61crit? I personally feel part of the haste-on-use of the abacus gets wasted while I would get full benefit of the hourglass.

Also, I might have access to Berserker's Call soon. Should I replace that with my Bloodlust Brooch or the hourglass/abacus... or is there a better combination of these trinkets at my proportion of attack power and crit?

(on a side note, how do you make wowhead popups in this forum?)

I currently am specced BM and have around T5 equiv gear. My question is simply in addition to my normal 3:2 macro spam what can I do to set myself apart from other hunters of my current gear level?

Specifically I want to know the best time to activate TBW, Bloodlust Brooch, and Rapid fire.

I currently own the SSO exalted neck (Im aldor exalted), the DST, and have aspect of the hawk up when fighting. Due to all of those aforementioned items proccing being out of my control, what's the best way to maximize DPS when these things proc?

I know I don't want to go below 1.5 speed but I find that it happens all the time when i hit rapid fire and either QS procs or my DST procs. Should my goal be to NEVER have QS or DST or RF proc at the same time? When should I hit TBW?

armory --> The World of Warcraft Armory

Joms,

I just switched over to SV after having thoroughly read the threads a while too and am at just about the same point in progression. Here are my thouhgts/answers to your Q's:

1) Consensus seems (and I agree) that before you get your 4pc T6 bonus and some decent haste gear (that doesn't gimp your stats)... stick with the 0/20/41 SV build. As far as the actual talent setup.. check my armory profile and use that with the following changes/notes: A) take 3/3 EW and 2/3 Thrill ot hunt (my guild doesn't really know how to use an SV hunter which is why I swap it around). B) the points in efficiency can be put into Imp hunters mark if your mana can take it and the 2 pts in feign death are free to put wherever.

2). Until you set up your 7/20/34 talent build, you'll probably want to be shooting a 1:1.5 macro (i.e. weaving multi/arcane into your rotation) to do your best dps. So no, you won't be mindlessly spamming the old 3:2 macro (though you can use it as the basis of your 1:1.5 rotation and weave the multis/arcanes in manually).

3) I'd go with the windserpent though I'm not sure if the extra crit is enough to replace the lost focus due to not having beastial discipline. If you find your windserpent is always out of focus... stick with the ravager. Someone else chime in here though.

4) Currently what I'm working on. Ultimate answer will always be to take the bow that gives you a shot speed where you can consistently shoot your 1:1.5 rotation well. For now I'd lean towards the slower bows and low haste and work on consistently maintating that rotation. Go to a basic 1:1 or 3:2 rotation (your old BM rotations) when you proc rapid fire, haste pots or heroism. You can pick up a few haste pieces or go with the faster bows when you know you can still maintain 1:1.5 in the shorter window of opportunity.

5) Have to do your own research here but thus far I don't see much difference between BM and SV as applicable to individual boss fights... could be wrong though.

Last words: Your shot rotation is everything at this point. Your old BM gear doesn't quite do the same job in SV as it would here... you really have to watch your base shot speed and what that becomes under the different haste effects. Check it on rapid fire, check it when heroism is up, check it when dst is up, check it with haste pots up, check it when different combinations are up. You want your HASTED attack speeds to be in a range where you can switch to the 3:2 or 1:1 shot rotation... otherwise that haste is pretty much useless. Same goes for haste gear... unless it pushes you into a different rotation in some circumstance, it's just gonna make it harder for you to manage your basic 1:1.5 rotation.

Gear decisions overall... might be worth looking to make a few gear swaps so that COLLECTIVELY you can make improvements. Usually this will come at getting rid of some of that extra hit for items that don't have it. because the hit will typically be useless, you might see collective improvements with gear you never thought would be viable options. I swapped out my S3 helm and took the ZA mail helm... bad change on it's own in a BM spec, but in SV where the 12 hit was wasted and combined with other gear changes it was worth it. (basically, tally what stats you gain/lose by making all the changes together and see what gear setup works best for you).

Good luck!

Barradin - thanks so much for your reply.

by the way, when you say 1:1.5 rotation which among the ones below should i use:

1)

/castsequence Steady Shot, !Auto Shot
/castrandom Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command, lightning breath

2)

/castsequence reset=3 steady shot,!auto shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] lightning breath


also:
- If i choose #1, do i just spam it much like the BM macro?
- In the macro of #2, do you only manually click arcane/multi-shot ?
- or is there a better macro than the above for SV?

Keep in mind that your LB should be macroed and not auto casted so that you do not get abnormal pet behavior/positioning. I would watch how often LB is going off in SCT as well as comparing the damage (to your old pet) in a WWS report. Your wind serpent should almost always be out of focus if it is casting LB every time it has focus, in addition the high crit rate of most surv specs should see a pretty good return on using a wind serpent. This may be a different outcome if you are the only hunter using a wind serpent and your raids are using a ele shaman (there is a whole different thread on this topic though).

Guys I know this is not the best thread to post this but here it goes. I've been extremely annoyed by my lack of crits lately, and since we started trying KJ I've been noting my crits every try and comparing to my spellbook crit. From tonight here it goes:

33/46
35/24
28/33
21/22
44/36
15/16
48/33
22/8
32/30
43/41

10 tries, first is auto shot crit second is steadyshot crit and my spellbook crit was 41%. When you sum them up and divide by 20 you get 30.5 crit overall. That's exactly 10.5% below my spellbook crit throughout the whole night. It's more than 3000 arrows for those so I think it's a big enough pool. I resetted recount after we kill the summoners every try so I can get the data only on KJ himself. I don't usually believe in bugged characters or anything but can someone explain to me how an RNG (assuming it really works) can be 10% off the target. It's even more than 10% since the boss had judgement of crusader on him almost all the time. Are there people who experience lack of crits? Or are there people on the other end of the spectrum, experiencing more crits than their spellbook? I had many tries where I had 15% below my spellbook crit, I didn't have ANY tries where I had 15% above my spellbook crit. So does blizzard's RNG work in a way such that you can get unlucky, but you can't get lucky? This is a major issue since we all use spreadsheets to calculate our damage and gear choices and the spreadsheets assume if we have 40% crit, we are going to crit 40%. If the RNG functions in a different way than that (I can't think of any reason why though), then the calculations will be off.

why is that elemental shamans dont go well with wind serpents? are they the only class that doesnt go good with wind serpents?

Unless you have 3 hunters using Wind Serpents.

(Assuming said hunters know how to use them).

Does crit % cap out for hunters? And if so, what is it?

No.

Not under any reasonable conditions anyway.

I am in the process of gearing a Hunter for PvP, and was wondering if anyone had hard data on DPS modeling for different ammo types.

At the moment, I'm thinking Aimed/Multi/Auto are affected by ammo and Steady/Arcane are not. Assuming that, is the difference in DPS between say 46 dps ammo and 53 dps ammo as large as the difference between a 126 dps melee weapon and a 133 dps melee weapon?

What damage rages do people see when switching out ammo, and is this supposed to be a relevant factor for Hunter PvP/PvE? (My hunter alt is in all greens and my guild never runs Hyjal so I might just shelve her if the ammo difference is too big a problem).

You are correct about which shots take ammo into account. The difference between 46 and 53 dps ammo is 7*weapon speed (=21 for a 3.0 weapon) damage to each of those shots, multiplied by any percent increases to damage (such as ferocious inspiration, armor, and critting). This is certainly not going to make or break you in any but the highest tier of arena pvp.

I have been searching though many various threads looking for more "theroycraft" type inforamtion about Armor Pen. I have not been able to find anything solid, which leaves me to basically test out different gear configs to see what is the optimal DPS build. My confusion comes from the huge difference in DPS reflected on Cheeky's spreadsheet when comparing a high ArP/fast attack speed build vs. a lesser ArP/slower attack speed build.

My Armory Link

My armory shows me wearing my high ArP/Fast Xbow build. I have been comparing it to a build that swaps the Shiv and Mounting Veng for my Felspine polearm and swapping the Xbow for my Illidan Bow. In theroy, the Illidan Bow will hit much harder using a standard 3:2 rotation at 2.07 attack speed (81 passive haste). On the other hand, my people swear by ArP and would say that my current armory build would be best....1246 ArP and 1.99 attack speed.

When I compare these to builds in Cheeky's spreadsheet (zero buffs, just the gear) the Felspine/Illidan Bow (910 ArP) is far superior. The spreadsheet shows me 1458 DPS. When I switch out the gear for the duel-wield Shiv/Mounting Veng and Xbow, Cheeky's shows me 1378 DPS. In both cases I am using the 3:2 rotation model on the spreadsheet (1:1 rotation w/ the Xbow didn't make much of differnece) and my avg latency is 100ms.

I am wondering if my latency is low enough to get a smooth 3:2 rotation with the slower bow build if it is going to yield a larger damage number due to Steadies hitting harder....harder than the %increase from ArP.

So, frustrating when trying to plan out future gear options and even using the best possible gear avialable to me now. The fact is I could use eitehr build and still do my job in the raid effectively, but I am hoping some more hardcore data is going surface to shead some light on adding in ArP.

Help please.

EDIT: Clarification for posting in this thread... the numbers I am getting are coming from Cheeky's spreadsheet. Looking for some feedback on any similar situations or information on accounting for Armor Pen when gearing for end game.