Cuuuuuurse them... curse them so hard... how am I going to show off now? *cough*
Now, back to the trapping discussion: we're sure this wasn't in the patch notes. But the obvious question is weather it's a bug or a stealth nerf. I'm pretty sure a lot of people would like to see that little trick disappear, but Blizzard seemed to be sympathetic towards us. Besides, if they really thought it was exploiting, they could have mentioned something on the tooltip. Now, there's something I'm going to try later (probably after tonight's raid), and check at least if two different trap effects can be active
I'm going to quote myself on this one, and admit that i was misinformed. I was not fully informed about the changes in 2.3, and assumed it to be a bug; thus, my contribution to the thread was flawed. However, both the trap issue and the FD + drink issue seem to be intended, yet undocumented changes. Mea culpa. Please disregard my previous post.
In summary, TBC raiding is easy. 9/10 encounters can be summarized with 1 phrase. Stay out of the fucking fire. If this is too difficult BWL was still there last I checked, so go have at it for some practice.
I was definately panicing trying to feign death and drink while 3000 of my mana ticked away in MH. Have not see the trap bug as of yet, but hopefully it is exactly that. Anyone know if your target is in a trap, and you lay a second right below the mob, does it re-effect the mob, or just disapears as if you were trapping 2 targets?
I've been trying this out since I heard about the "fix" to the hunter traps, these are my experiences with the changes.
Trapping a second mob in a freezing trap (intentional or not) will release your first mob. Multi-trapping is no longer possible. How this will play out when aggro goes wild when chain trapping in instances I have yet to experience but I reckon trap placement will be more important than ever.
Laying another trap right under the first trapped mob will refresh the trap. The duration will be extended without the mob getting unfrozen inbetween.
The effects of these changes will obviously be the largest for the survival spec. Clever Traps, Trap Mastery and Resourcefulness (and Readiness to a certain extent) will from now on be talents purely for making chain-trapping easier (as opposed to opening up the possibility of mult-trapping).
I'm not sure how heavily raiding hunters value multi-trapping but from a personal just-starting-on-heroics perspective these changes are enough reason for me to spec back into Beastmaster.
It is very disappointing that they still haven't come up with a raid viable way for hunters to manage mana effectively and then they do this. Honestly I try my hardest to never FD/drink, but it is still better than standing their autoshotting when you have run out of anything else.
Are many BT/Hyjal raids giving shadow priests or even a shaman to hunters? I know we rarely get a shaman but that is about it. Usually we are stuck with the locks.
It is very disappointing that they still haven't come up with a raid viable way for hunters to manage mana effectively and then they do this. Honestly I try my hardest to never FD/drink, but it is still better than standing their autoshotting when you have run out of anything else.
Are many BT/Hyjal raids giving shadow priests or even a shaman to hunters? I know we rarely get a shaman but that is about it. Usually we are stuck with the locks.
I think a Shaman is a reasonable demand, at least in 1 out of 2 raids. I get one most times, being stacked with another BM or an SV-Hunter, as well as a Rogue an mostly a Warri, or even another Hunter. Gives good synergy in my opinion and the Enh-Shamans don´t like windfury-totem either, and are mostly glad if they have a reason to set agility (and 2 Hunter and a Rogue definitely are a reason). But an SP? Keep on dreaming^^
As far as the traps are concerned I´m frankly very disappointed, that they keep screwing our CC-abilites more and more. Doing some heroics for Nether the last few days I once more realized, that traps are one of the worst CCs, the resist-rate is just horrible (okay, this might be other for SV) and it keeps breaking before the full duration expires, and not just once, and no there was definitely no AE on the mob. I didnt note the early-breaking before, but I haven´t done any heroics with the hunter since March or April I think.
But I really was troubled by the bad CC-ability, with (though in not-so-near-future) upcoming WotLK and quite heavy farming of 5-mans in the beginning, where every single CC is viable.
With combat exp/careful aim I gain 11.20 Agi (11 atk pwr and .25 crit) and I gain 14.40 intellect which comes out to 114.48 atk pwr gain. So overall I would gain 125 atk pwr, 14.40 int and .25 crit....is that worth more then 4% weapon damage (I'll still have a point in weapon specialization)?
I´d say it´s more ore less a matter of taste. I´d take the more AP, though, since the lack of AP in PvP-Gear is huge at the moment. But I´d also drop the impArcane for impConcussive, since you will use concussive on nearly every CD, and a possible CC more (though luckbased, I know) I´d take rather than 1 sec less CD on Arcane, even with the newly gained importance of Arcane in Arenas.
Actually I thought about proposing a change where a triggered trap disappears whenever a second one is triggered. If traps had no cd and there was no limit on how many mobs/player you can trap there´s really nothing to keep hunters from trapping whole groups. Because of this Blizzard had to put an cd on traps.
Now that we don´t have the ability to double trap any longer, what´s to keep Blizzard from lifting cd completely off traps or at least lower it to a few seconds? Almost every other form of cc can be spammed or reapplied whenever the caster sees fit whereas with traps I always have to deal with an the chance of an heartbeat break or resist while my trap is still on cd. A smart hunter could alleviate this to a certain degree with smart usage of traps and of course beeing survival helped a bit too, but in the end traps were still inferior to other forms of cc for those reasons.
Now I´d have traded my ability to double trap any day for having the cd taken off traps completely. Unfortunatly it seems like Blizzard decided to "fix" double trapping while keeping the cd unchanged. Here´s hope they´ll reconsider them now though. What do you think, would traps without any cooldown really be too overpowered for PvE and PvP?
At the matter of castsequence macros - I had the impression that castsequence doesn´t notice auto shots beeing cast any more. I only tried it at farming so I couldn´t really try longer sequences though. I´m basically using a simple steady, auto reset=3 macro and weave in multi and arcane manually for a 1:1.5 sequence. So when I was farming I started with auto, immediatly followed by steady and multi, then another auto and when I tried to do my second steady the macro blocked as if it´s still waiting for another auto shot. I´ll test it at Dr. Boom if I find some time after work.
Last edited by Midnight : 11/15/07 at 10:36 AM.
Reason: typos
That´s an interesting proposition. I don´t see issues with that in PvE, PvP might be a bit more complicated, but let´s think it through:
Freezing trap: No problem in PvP if there´s a diminishing return on it, would be just a CC like many others.
Frost trap: Also no problem, if the old one disappears as soon as you set a new one.
Snake trap: Snakes have so few hp, so no problem with that I suppose.
Immolation trap: Only problem could be stacking DoTs.
Explosive trap: The only one which might cause problems since it has (though mediocre) instant damage. But it´s so mana-intensive that you can´t spam it without going oom quickly either, so I think it would work.
Generally it should work and give us at least one reasonable CC in PvE and more possiblities to vary quickly in PvP.
What I observed last night was that my Auto Shots could fire one of two ways, implicitly or explicitly. If I kept spamming my Steady » Auto macro, the game would be explicitly instructed to /cast Auto Shot immediately after my Steady Shot finished. This would not cause any hiccup in my macro. However, if I allowed Auto Shot to fire implicitly, by simply letting my Auto Shot timer elapse, the /castsequence would not acknowledge the implicit Auto Shot, and continue to wait for the explicit instruction to /cast Auto Shot.
A diagram might be instructive.
Scenario 1 - Spamming Macro
1. Spamming macro. Macro status: /castsequence reset=2/target Steady Shot, Auto Shot
2. Steady Shot fires. Continue spamming macro. Macro status: /castsequence reset=2/target Steady Shot, Auto Shot
3. Auto Shot fires. Macro status: /castsequence reset=2/target Steady Shot, Auto Shot
4. Return to Step 1.
Scenario 2 - Not Spamming Macro
1. Press macro once. Macro status: /castsequence reset=2/target Steady Shot, Auto Shot
2. Steady Shot fires. Macro status: /castsequence reset=2/target Steady Shot, Auto Shot
3. Allow Auto Shot timer to elapse. Macro status: /castsequence reset=2/target Steady Shot, Auto Shot
4. Press macro once to fire Steady Shot. FAIL, because macro status: /castsequence reset=2/target Steady Shot, Auto Shot[/i] The game is still attempting to cast Auto Shot, not Steady Shot.
Now, this speaks to either or both of two malfunctions:
1. An implicit Auto Shot should be, but isn't being, acknowledged as continuing/completing a castsequence. This suggests two corollary questions: should an implicit Auto Shot conclude a castsequence? Is this a new behaviour since 2.3? Or did we not notice because of....
2. The castsequence is ignoring the reset condition. Unless I misunderstand the reset condition, my castsequence macro should reset two seconds after its begun. In the event of an implicit Auto Shot, shouldn't my macro have reset back to Steady Shot by the time my Auto Shot timer elapses?
It certainly would explain my experience. I can also confirm castsquence used to work with implicit auto shooting pre 2.3 as I didn´t use the "spam" tactic and it worked.
Hey I just figured out something interesting that others may already know.. but since this is such a long thread I figured I would post it anyway...
If you name your pet the same name as one of your raid members, WWS will parse the pet and give credit to the player.
Here's my report and my pet is missing! - Gunnery - WWS
Here's the player who's name my pet shares... Holy Priest FTW! - Anemonie - WWS
On a side note I am using a priority rotation, I too think I am having the same macro issues others are having above. Do these logs help give any insight?
Hello. This is my first post to the forum. I've been reading through some of the content here, and I must say it's second-to-none. I only wish I'd found this place sooner. I'm a 7/42/12 build hunter and use an Owl for instances and raids. I did as search of the thread for information about the screech ability and didn't find much information on it. For a long time, I've been wondering if it's a useful enough de-buff to be worth using an owl over a cat/ravager. Essentially, I'm wondering if the amount of damage it prevents the tank from taking (and consequently the mana it saves the healers) provides enough utility to the raid to compensate for the slightly reduced DPS it's doing. I realize there are a lot of variables in play here including the mob, who's tanking and who's healing, but I'm hoping there maybe be an easy answer in terms of general advice. My other two pet slots are taken for other purposes, so I'm looking to see if I should replace my owl as my "raid pet".
My guild is running Kara and has nearly downed Gruul, so that and Heroics are the kind of content I'm mostly concerned with, if that helps at all. Another detail is that I"m the only non-BM hunter raiding in my guild, so if anyone was going to have an owl, it would be me. I would think in order to determine the amount of damage the 220 AP de-buff is preventing, we'd need to know the mob's total AP (something that isn't published I don't think?). Would it be possible to determine experimentally--and if so has it been done? E.g. parse a fight with a mob with screech and without and compare the amount of damage done and if a 220AP de-buff reduced damage by say 3%, then the mob's total AP would be 7333. Is that correct logic, or am I missing something/a moron? Thanks in advance for any and all advice you have to offer.
What I've found in regards to the Owl is the tank doesn't like it. We are a high DPS output guild and anything that lowers the damage he takes lowers his rage generation which means less threat.. which means more auto-attack or stop attacking calls.
There is another thread on this forum that has "[Hunter] Spreadsheet" or something like that. In it you can do a comparison between pets based on your gear and talent spec. Good luck!
Thank you for the fast reply. I take from your response that the screech ability indeed does make a significant impact on the amount of damage taken by the main tank (enough for him to complain about it interfering with his rage generation), or is it simply the case that the tank objects to anything that may reduce his rage generation even on a theoretical basis without necessarily experiencing the effect? The reason I'm asking is that I'm trying to figure out if screech really does make a significant impact in damage reduction in a raid environment and if so, roughly what kinds of percentages are we talking? As you point out, damage reduction clearly isn't ideal in all raiding circumstances, but I would think it a useful tool to bring to your raid group in those circumstances where damage reduction would be considered helpful (If indeed it actually does anything of significance).
You might want to consider is what your raid composition is. Do you bring a few warlocks? Is your raid heavy on physical dps? If you answered these 'yes', then have a warlock keep curse of recklessness up on the boss. Screech from your Owl would offset the increased boss damage while still reaping the benefit of lowering its armor (and increasing the raid-wide dps). Another thread discussed the effects of different AP-altering abilities (Demo shout/roar, Curse of Weakness, screech) and how they can be used to greater effect.
If your tank complains about rage generation on Gruul he must have stacked excessively towards avoidance. A change in a couple pieces of gear to trade avoidance for stamina, armor, and block should give him a little more rage without significantly increasing the damage taken.
Likewise, reducing the damage received by the tank could possibly allow you to switch out a healer for another dps class. After all, dead bosses do no damage
Last edited by Iod : 11/16/07 at 9:11 AM.
Reason: Poor choice of words.
Hey everyone. After arguing with a coworker about how mana dependent (and starved) hunters are, it got me thinking about whether or not someone has ever run the numbers. I tried to here at work, but I've never theory crunched numbers before so I don't even want to attempt posting it.
Namely, what I am looking for is, given a hunters base mana regen while casting/in combat, how long will it take with various shot rotations to go totally OOM and how will AotV and Fel Mana Pots combat it? (IE - how much time do you get back before you are OOM again?)
I'd like to get some hard numbers, so that I can continue to push my case for providing hunters with Shadow Priests in raids... especially now that we will no longer be able to FD/Drink to help ease the problem.
Tibor, your experiences coincide with mine in 2.3. In 2.2 and previous, implicit Autoshots were recognized by /castsequence. I'm not sure how they impacted macro reset.
One would think that these two behaviors should be linked, i.e.:
Implicit autoshots are recognized by /castsequence and affected the reset timer OR
Implicit autoshots are not recognized by /castsequence and do not affect the reset timer.
Right now, my experiences say that implicit autoshots are not recognized by /castsequence but they do impact the reset timer. Which means that if you "miss" hitting the macro during an autoshot you are screwed - you will need to manually weave a full sequence or set an overly aggressive reset timer to compensate (which will hurt you in other areas).
edit: My current tactic is, if I miss an autoshot, manually weave until the next autoshot then start hitting the macro again (effectively resuming the sequence). For a 1.5:1 rotation this bumps me down to a 1.33:1 rotation for each mistake I make. I'll need more practice to find out if I can be good enough about avoiding this situation for it to be worth the latency hit that the macro saves.
Hey everyone. After arguing with a coworker about how mana dependent (and starved) hunters are, it got me thinking about whether or not someone has ever run the numbers. I tried to here at work, but I've never theory crunched numbers before so I don't even want to attempt posting it.
Namely, what I am looking for is, given a hunters base mana regen while casting/in combat, how long will it take with various shot rotations to go totally OOM and how will AotV and Fel Mana Pots combat it? (IE - how much time do you get back before you are OOM again?)
I'd like to get some hard numbers, so that I can continue to push my case for providing hunters with Shadow Priests in raids... especially now that we will no longer be able to FD/Drink to help ease the problem.
The Hunter DPS spreadsheet calculates mana expenditure and time to OOM.
That's a very interesting idea about the curse of recklessness, thank you for suggesting it. Our 25-mans fluctuate quite a bit in terms of composition but hunter DPS is a disproportionately large percentage of our overall raid dps typically and would certainly benefit from an AC debuff. I'll have to run that one past the Raid Leader and see what he thinks. As the only MM hunter in the raid, I'm a bit of a black sheep, and always looking for ways to bring a bit of versatility and utility to the group.
11/14/07, 8:43 PM
