Indeed, I spent a bit of time at 70 going for the dungeon sets and socketing crap gems/not enchanting stuff as I was rather broke. I'm now in a position where I can afford to craft some of the patterns I've gotten from SSC & TK and buy some decent gems, which is why I'm asking which ones I would be best off investing in, same goes for enchants... Savagery vs +35 agi and so forth.

Yes, he would be. But the spec his Armory showed, at least, didn't have it.

Thanks for the help. I want to switch to 41/20/0, I really do but at the moment My guild cant seem to understand that FI is better than TSA. So until I get one more piece of T5 they told me not to switch.

As for going 20/41 The only reason why I feel it would not be worth it is because when I go for max hit rating i get to about 125. By losing the 3% would that dps loss be made up by going to 20/41?

Also if I do go to 20/41 should I be trying to keep my HR up as high as it can?
In other words should I sacrifice other stats to maintain a high enough HR?

So how much +hit does a Draenei hunter need, since I already get 1% from my racial?

I heard 136 was the required cap without Surefooted, since I'm BM, how much do I need?
(Also, what's the rating per % on hit rating?)

Ok, so I have come to the point where I have a lot of different choices as far as gear goes and I was wondering whether I should switch out some of my pieces for some of the the other gear that I have in my bank.

The World of Warcraft Armory

That is my current raid gear and I was wondering if it would be more worth while to use a T4 helm with a meta gem with relentless earthstone and swap in my poison vial for the added hit to keep me at cap.

the other major gear swap I was thinking of making was the ebon netherscale Chestpiece for the merc chest and I would probably keep the gear set I'm wearing now so I could socket the chest with 2x 8 agi and a wicked noble topaz.

Also any other gear pointers would be nice to have.

The cap is 142
9% to hit - 1% racial=8% needed
8x15.8=about 126

Hi,

First, tyvm for such an amazing tool Cheeky, at the moment Im still overwhelmed by its complexity and so many options, i am still learning how to feed it and interprete the results.

Second, since I still dont feel confortable doing my own analysis, I want to ask for some help.

For my current gear, my racial, and loot that I can likely get (We are doing SSC hydross, lurker, TK VR, Gruul, Kara), Is the Don Santos rifle better than the steelhawk xbow Im currently using? If so, by how much?
I have a still not equiped Don Santos on my bank, I dont want to equip to later found out that DPS is basically the same or less.

My game style: I currently use 4 macros,
a) steady-auto-kc;
b) arcane-auto-kc;
c) cast bloodlust brooch-cast BW-cast Rapid Fire-Steady-auto; (sometimes I need to press this one 2 times because it does not trigger all the actions)
d) cast abacus of violent odds-steady-auto
Basically what I do: for long boss fights, spam A, when cool spam C, when cool spam D.
For shorter fights I do A, B, C, D when ever B is cool, C is cool, D is cool.
If I need to change my macros for better dps or to better suit the Don Santos, please let me know too.

Should I make a new different macro for when IAotH procs? Or should I just keep spamming A?

Lastly, I will gladly take advise on my current gear/gems/enchants. Im aware of my poor choice on the hands gems/enchant and Im planning on changing that really soon to all agi gem/enchant.

Thanks a again for all advice and feed back. I am looking foward for it.

Riru

PD, About my char: Dwarf, BM, Armory

Start by plugging in your spec and gear into the spreadsheet. Then put in your normal shot rotation which you can do by pressing the 1:1 button on the shot rotation tab. Put in the steelhawk crossbow and note your dps. Then swap in the gun. Three things are working to your advantage with the gun. 1) its a bit faster which benefits your spec. 2) your racial gives you +5 weapon skill with guns which reduces the amount of +hit you need to 95. Right now you are 26 points under the hit cap. With the gun you would be 5 points over it. 3) It procs a lot.

I would also do a comparrison against a [Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle] too because it is easily within your reach (need some luck) and it may be better for you to sell it and hold out.

18/43/0 will actually do more dps in a raid situation than 20/41/0. The 2 extra points go into careful aim to bump your AP by about half of your int. Raid buffed you can get around 150 extra ap out of it.

You still want to get your HR as close to cap as possible.

Since TBC came out, i've been experimenting with different specs and setups for all trees, and for all purposes. Mostly, the 41/20/0 and the 0/20/41 (or x/2x/37 variation) have caught my eye as being good in a raid environment; if i may say so, one would be a show of brute force, while the other a display of finesse.

However, all Marksmanship specs i've been fiddling with so far are falling behind. In a fit of nostalgia for the old days when Marksman was the only way to go, i'm looking for particular circumstances where Marksmanship would outperform the now standard BM and SV raiding specs.

Now, i know that, in theory, Marksmanship can become viable if you can stack enough passive haste to achieve a 1:1 rotation. However, i have no access to such gear due to my guild progression, so this will remain, for a while in the realm of theory.

My question to you guys is this: are there any other ways to go (i.e stacking -armor), or any specific figures past which Marksmanship becomes a viable choice for raiding? I'd like to see some opinions, either way

And just for the record, i'd like to keep this to the realm of patch 2.2 (maybe 2.3, with the assumption that there will be no new surprise changes to the class)

I've found this build to be top DPS according to Cheeky's spreadsheet. Your thoughts?

Indeed it is; to be fair, i should have mentioned that the biggest drawback i found is actually the fact that it's draining the mana pool about 2 times faster than a BM, because of the 1:1.5 rotation's mana expensive abilities (multishot and scorpid sting). Although my current survival build basically uses the same rotation, TOTH is worth every last talent point in that particular field.

This was such an issue that in fights where i could unleash and keep up the rotations for a long time (Gruul, Magtheridon, Lurker being the only ones i killed as Marksman, and only for a couple of resets), i ran out of mana mid way through the fights. This happened even with fel mana potions on every cooldown, aspect of the viper and mana oil and 3 blessings (back then i used an Axe of the Gronn lords instead of the 2 Longblades for AP).

That would be really cool, but unfortunatly unless theyre going for lot of haste gear in zul aman is not possible.

You would need 15-20% haste to step down to a 1:1 rotation efficently, with haste rating nerf for melee you're gonna need something like 225-300 haste rating. This is a huge amount! At the momnet you can't pass 200 if you have access to all items available and even then you would probably gimp a bit yourself doing so.

Anyway who knows? with a bit of luck in zul aman we will see a 3.4 weapon that would allow a 1:2 rotation, or some better quivers with more haste... and then such rotation could become true.

That said, this would be my spec for that rotation

Well, we know for a fact ZA will have at least one passive haste item that hunters can use (Blizz has already released the stats for it at Blizzcon), so nothing's stopping them from adding more.

MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies

However, i liked the idea of a 1:2 rotation, and the quivers are incoming... except we don't know how much (more?) haste they will bring to the table.

And a slow enough weapon would, in theory allow for a 1:2 rotation even with some significant haste, or am i wrong?

You meant arcane shot right?

Something else that plagues raid groups as a whole is some specs just require a certain level of raid dps to be viable (a non-hunter example would be arcane mages). If it takes you 10 min to kill Tidewalker some specs for many classes just wont work because the mana isnt there to sustain it. Once total raid dps climbs to the point where its a 5-6 min fight then everyone can go max burst dps spec and have at it. Of course thats a chicken egg issue because people need to do that to get there in the first place. What ends up happening is people spec more conservatively until the group gears out to a point. Then people start maxxing specs and dps climbs again. Then you figure out its a good idea to make all your priests go Shadow and dps climbs again. Personally I was MM until a month ago and Ive never had issues running out of mana going all out and chugging fel mana pots. Never used viper either. Sure it would be close here and there.

Meh, yeah, but every now and then i refresh the scorpid sting too soon between cooldons, because it's a habit i can't seem to shake off.

I probably have an explanation for that... poor pet management on my behalf. I'm quite sure my mend pet either overheals or overrides an existing mend pet in those "oh shit situations", like flame patches and cave ins. Especially late in the fights, when we're on a good streak.

It would be really nice if Zul'Aman had at least some variety in weapon speed. The always prevalent 3.0 speed is really annoying me. If you think about it, it is nearly the perfectly worst speed in the game. Too slow for a BM hunter and too fast for Marks and Survival to have clean rotations. I would be elated if either the Archimonde or Illidan weapons were 2.7 speed, or better yet the legendary weapon that is coming...

Well, aside from the macro you use, i suppose you could get the Quartz cast bar if you don't already have it, to help you time your shots a bit better.
It has an option to display the latency at the end of the cast bar, so you will have a better idea when to queue the next macro. Although, at that latency, it's not nearly an exact science, it sure beats shooting blind.

I have entered my build and my gear in the spreadsheet. Used the normal rotation and compared steelhawk vs don santos, don santos wins by like 12dps. My concern is when I use the haste trinket and the rapid fire. At this point, my shot rotation still works or it become too fast with the 2.7 gun speed? I have not figure out how to measure that condition with the spreadsheet yet.

My suggestions below may be a bit unconventional, so feel free to question them.

When spamming cast sequence macros at high latency, I've found you can reduce auto shot clipping somewhat by replacing Steady Shots with Arcane and Multi-Shot whenever possible. This in itself is not unconventional--it's called a 1:1 priority rotation, and is commonly used to max dps because Arcane and Multi-Shot can generate slightly higher damage than Steady Shot. But my reason for reommending it is not the higher damage per shot, but because Steady Shots will cause greater Auto Shot delay (clipping) than Arcane (or Multi) in a 1:1 rotation at latency when cast sequencing. Because [steady-cast-time] plus [server-to-client-shot-completion-notification] is longer for Steady Shot than an instant.

For example, you can try replacing this line of your macro

with

/castsequence reset=10/combat, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Arcane Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Multi-Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot

With a 2.9 speed (or higher) bow, the duration of this sequence will be long enough to avoid stalling on the Multi-Shot CD when Quick Shots is procced or Rapid Fire is used. (Not if both are up simultaneously, but with high latency and clipping already, it probably won't cause further delays anyway.)

On the downside, this sequence only reduces clipping on 2 out of 6 Auto Shots. And your mana consumption will increase substantially.

A more unconventional workaround you can expirement with is deleting the Auto Shots that fall after instants from the above cast sequence. When you are hasted with high latency, chances are good that your Auto Shots will still go off during the GCD after any instant shot. I find that with 500+ latency, the following cast-sequence works pretty well for Rapid Fire most of the time:

/castsequence reset=10/combat, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Multi-Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot

I (usually) still get Auto Shots after the Arcane and Mult-Shot at a more significant reduction in clipping, even though they are not called by the macro. But when Rapid Fire expires, I need to switch to a macro that includes all Auto Shots.

I think I read in the BM thread that your best bet is to pop one after the other, not both at the same time. If its only 12dps then Id sell the gun and wait on a wolfslayer. Id of expected it to be more considering where you are +hit wise.

I've found that with high latency using a castsequence macro just doesnt work. You need to be hitting off your next special before your client shows you finising your current autoshot in order to fit them in, especially under haste effects. I can't do a god job of explaining why so I'm not going to attempt it, but castsequence with steady/auto won't let you fire things off in time. That's just my experience.