Repeat after me: Weapon speed is more important than weapon DPS.

Once haste gear comes into play you can tune weapon speed to a degree. It's all about a rotation with little down time.

Especially ironic since the main reason for the hunter revamp with TBC was to make weapon speed less of a factor. All they've managed to do is change the desired speed from "as slow as possible" to "as close to 2.7 as possible". Whee.

Any time you have 2 different abilities that interfere with each other, and one's frequency is fixed, you'll find a "sweet spot" for the other that trumps most additional concerns. I do agree that removing Aimed Shot and adding Steady Shot was a dismal failure from a game play point of view.

But since I don't work at Blizzard all I can do is figure out ways to make the mechanics work for me as best as possible.

[fanboimode] Too bad, perhaps if that was the case we as a class would be much better off.. [/fanboimode]

It's equally irritating that Blizzard's item design team seems to be completely unaware (or just doesn't care) about our mechanics, I can hardly find another way to explain the steady stream of 3.0 or 2.9 weapons they throw at us in every single instance past Karazhan (the new weapons from ZA being just another example).

I'm definitly agreed there. I've been pretty saddened by the fact that the easiest, strong rotation for hunters to use now is, as specced BM, Steady -> Auto, repeat fifty million times. The fact that I like having to work in multiple shots is one of the reasons I'm still MM and haven't caved for BM. I really miss the comfort of the 9 and 10 second rotations as well. Your rotation was based off of one shot and it gave me, at least, a very nice feeling of an actual rotation. Even though I definitly have a solid and effective one now, it's still very easy to get lost in because there are no "downbeats", for the lack of a better word, that give the feel of a true rotation. The other thing I miss about it is that it made for very solid FD timing, and it was really a part of my overall rotation.

Anyway, enough nostalgia, /steers thread back on track.

Is there some way that FD can resist, but not show it?

I had a mod that bangs a loud gong when the resist message comes up, as well as see I my agro on omen not drop when it resists.

Sometimes tho, theres no resist message, theres no resist gong, and omen threat drops, and I'll pull agro 15 seconds later

Need some advice/help here. Lately (mainly after 2.2) i find my self to stop dps more and more often due to how much threat i build up. I am on average 950-1050 dps according to the encounter. A typical scenario is this:

MD -> Aimshot
Auto
Steady
Auto
Arcane
Auto
Multi
FD (0 Aggro)
All cds up (tbw/trinkets/etc)
Full nuke.
Woot! 10 seconds before FD is ready again i have to stop dps because i am that "__" (:P) close to pull aggro. With all the cds up i find my self having around 1100 or more tps where my tank is around 650-700. I mean.. the only possible solution i can think is nuke "lesser". Is the 650-700 tps normal for a warrior or its my fault?

Thank you in advance.

This is our best Kael attempt for last night and it seems our hunter DPS is a little low, if anyone with experience on this fight or can spot anything drastic that needs to change from this report please feel free to rip it to shreds...

http://elitistjerks.com/513222-post2878.html

@ Havefaith

I wouldn't personally worry about hunter DPS unless it's a blaring problem in terms of killing Thaladred in phase 3. We just downed Kael for the first time on Sunday and have pretty much ignored meters entirely unless it was Damage/Healing done to or taken by a specific target. Kael is more about everyone executing their roles than it is a DPS race. The only times when it could be considered a real DPS race, at least for us are:

1.) Weapons (once you get coordinated with AoE, etc, it's no issue, least for us)
2.) Thaladred phase 3 (for some reason our ranged DPS on him is terrible while Telonicus and Sang go down in a hurry)
3.) The barrier you have to DPS down to interrupt Pyro (can't remember the name atm)
4.) Phoenix eggs

If you're still worried about it, have all your hunters go MM, it's, at least from what I've read and personally seen, the best spec for this fight.

Vampirelord is BM and I don't see a single thing done with his/her pet, not good, even for an MM or SV hunter. I'll say the same thing about Zubotai. While Kael isn't a pet-friendly fight, there are still several things you can use your pet on.

However, a glaring issue I see is that you're not DPSing down the bow first. That needs to go down first. It will increase all physical DPS in the raid by a very nice amount.

I can't tell you for sure, but I do end up having the same trouble on a couple of fights. I usually blow my MD, then wait about ten to fifteen seconds, blow my trinkets, and nuke. I watch Omen religiously and FD when I'm getting close, wait for the threat to reset, then finish out my trinket timers and fall back into my normal rotation as soon as my haste returns down to normal.

Now I know this has been touched on briefly by myself and a few others some time ago but no real addressing of the stat has been tackled. (Atleast from what I can find) So rather than continue to beat my head against the wall trying to model this stat against real DPS gains I thought I would bring the discussion to the table. We first saw armor pen on our tier 6's item budget and with 2.3 it's everywhere from our S3 gear to ZA gear to the new heroic badge gear.

Now I know it's easy enough to use the standard damage reduction formula to take X value, calculate damage reduction, subract Y armor recalculate and vuala..but where do you go from here?

Just looking at this formula you can see that armor pen is going to calculate multiplicativly, making the stats DPS gains rather situational compared to static stats. (IE: Druid, pally tanks on unsundered mobs). On the other side of that we run a rouge with Imp expose armor so in my case I would be on the upside of the stat.

So here is my questions for you smarties:

Is there a "soft cap" to the amount of armor pen one can achieve (can you go negative?)
Is there really any way to actually model each point of armor pen to actual DPS gains (With a standard armor value of lets say 5000)

I will update as I come up with more.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I r gud spelur

Obviously you can not negate more armor than a mob has (same as negative resistances were removed). From a raid point of value, most boss mobs have 6200/7700 armor and full debuffs (5x sunder, FF, CoR) will take off 4010, leaving 2190/3690.

(See: [RAID] Boss armor values)

Edit: 'cause I posted slow
With the trinket and enough AP on armor you should get close to getting the mob down to 0 really. A lot of the new ZA/badge gear has AP on it already and they most likely will add even more with new instancens.

Tell them to get their pet involved more no matter what spec they are.
If you have 1 hunter on the melee target in ph3 and the 2 others on thaladred tell them to send their pet to sanguinar.
By the way are they even looting the bow? their dps seems very low.
I'm not sure it's the hunters problem maybe it's their assignments in the fight. So if you could tell us their jobs in the different phases it would help abit.

Un-hasting rotation viable?

Scrap this, forgot about 0,5 cast time. Shame on me!

Couldn't you model this on Cheeky's spreadsheet to find out?

In regards to cast sequence macros...among the 36 pages on this particular thread there are varying uses of starting a macro with either Auto Shot or Steady Shot. Some do it one way, and others the opposite.

It really hasn't been stated definitively. Which is better to start a macro with, Auto or Steady Shot?

For example:

/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/castsequence reset=2/target/combat Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()

OR

/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/castsequence reset=2/target/combat Auto Shot, Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()

Is there a difference when using a longer sequence on for 1:1.5 macros that incorporate Arcane/Multishot?

I've been working on building the best gear setup for BM dwarf hunter in 2.3 for a while now.

This is the best dps I've managed so far: RapidShare: 1-Click Webhosting

If anyone got spare time or is just bored, try to beat my dps and make a better gear setup. :p

This is my first post here, and I've got a few questions that would be great to have the answers to.

I've been trying to filter through and search for a couple posts, but for the life of me can't find the posts where someone addresses the performance impact of taking 3 points out of Mortal shots from a 41/20/0 spec and putting said points into Hawkeye (41/17/3). I believe the quoted number was an 8% decrease in dps, but when I checked the numbers with Cheeky's spreadsheet it only resulted in a loss of 3% dps. Would anyone be able to shed some light on this?

I simply ask because the guild I joined expects to have their cake and eat it too when it a comes to a BM spec (long reach + considerable dps for poor gearing). I try to explain to them that Mortal Shots is a bread and butter talent for just about any hunter, but I'd like some more definitive numbers to back it up. In all honesty I'd rather be MM/SV, but with my current gear I don't see myself beating the T4 rogues as handily as I do now as BM.

As a second question, fully-gemmed with +8agi gems, the spreasheet indicates a 1dps DROP between the T4 Shoulders and the Beastlord Mantle (in essence trading AP for crit). Did I input something incorrectly? Or have others out there come to the same conclusion?

I've been playing with my gear and still haven't been able to find an optimal configuration for keeping the hit cap and maximizing my dps.

Things that I have in the bank aside from what's listed on my character in the Armory:
Sonic Spear (with +35 Agi)
Stellaris
Violet Signet of the Master Assasin
Steelhawk Crossbow
Demonstalker Shoulderguards
Beastmaw Pauldrons
Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation
Abacus of Violent odds

I'd gone to dual-wielding because someone had said to me (before I had even heard of theorycraft, spreadsheets, etc.) that it had the potential for beating out some of the better 2H weapons, with the additional benefit of being able to use 2 mana oils simultaneously. Part of my messy gemming was to satisfy the metagem requirements. I suppose I can go back and redo those with all reds and two greens, but would like to hold off until I can snag the Fiendslayer Boots and Girdle of the Prowler, as they'll afford me the +hit necessary to completely revamp my setup (and trade the +30hit scope for +28 crit on the Rifle).
If anyone has any ideas as to what a better setup would be, I'd love to get some constructive criticism on the matter.

I have heard rumor that server side spell queueing has broken the tried and true..

/castsequence reset=3 Auto Shot, Steady

.. macro, and that its continued use in 2.3 PTR has resulted in a spamming of steady shot twice and autoshot twice ruining shot rotations miserably. Anyone have any news on this?

You're right, completely forgot about 0,5 cast time of auto, shame on me.


Anyway you forgot that haste affect steady cast time, but not the GCD. That means second steady will start firing after at 1,5 sec regardless of haste and will end up clipping your autoshot.

It really is preference. I like starting mine with Steady Shot because FD resets your auto shot timer to the full, unhasted amount. The only other difference is if you start with an auto shot you get your first shot off pretty close to instantly. I guess the auto shot timer starts off with a shot ready to go when you haven't been doing anything for a bit.

I also prefer to start with auto shot; it seems to me that it starts my rotations much cleaner. I can cast Steady immediately after my first Auto fires (I do my rotations manually for the most part), and it gives me a head start on the dead time between Steady Shot and the next Auto, basically making me less likely to cut into the .5 second hidden cast time of Auto. If I start getting my SS firing too close to my Autos, then I will use an arcane shot to kind of do the same thing and reset my rotation. Others may feel differently, but as a BM hunter with a 1.83 attack speed, I find myself having to maintain a pretty tight rotation and these two things seem to help without cutting into my dps very much. Just my $.02