Kamaa

Make sure you have a frost trap down before the demons spawn. As soon as they do sick your pet on him. If I recall correctly he's stunnable. Makre sure you stun him. After that it's a short kite with a concussion shot as needed. If you need to, save your big red and trinkets for this. It's rumored that your pet can not get the Killing Blow or you will fail and need to be killed. This has either been changed, or I've just been exceptionally lucky because there have been a couple times that I forget to pull my pet off before he dies.

 

Koroshiya

Yes I have 600 unbuffed without LR. I now have LR and sit around 700 unbuffed. I wish I had the gear to get 850 unbuffed when starting Hyjal/BT. But I don't think I could currently get that from SSC/TK gear, however, there are some key pieces I am missing from these areas but I appear to still be doing quite well.

 

Mancer

To kill my demon as BM spec I wing clip it straight away, use Intimidation (1 min CD it will always be ready) and put my pet on it then get to range while it's stunned, fire an arcane and put up a serpent sting while moving to range, turn around and fire off a few shots (auto, steady, auto, multi) while it closes in to me. If I'm lucky it will stop to cast a mind blast at me and I'll be able to get another auto/steady combo off. Once it gets back into melee range wing clip and move to range firing an arcane again, stop fire off an auto/multi combo and it should be dead, if not repeat the wing clip / move away sequence until it is. I used to recall my pet from Leotheras as he casts Insidious Whisper to have my pet by my side ready to claw away at the demon if one spawns on me, it means doing a bit less dps on Leo but if you're having trouble killing the demon it might be the difference between getting MC'd or not.

I can't remember the last time I got MC'd because my pet got the Killing Blow and I leave my pet on the demon until its dead, I'm fairly certain they fixed that bug and its no longer a problem. I have noticed demons completely ignore my pets threat, Intimidation + Growl should be *way* more aggro than my initial wing clip but the demon never hits my pet these days.

 

Galred

To add to Kamaa's advice:

1. Use a Serpent Sting. Normally this is a waste of mana BUT the demons take extra damage from Nature and Holy spells.

2. Definitely save your cooldowns. Usually if you pop trinkets and/or TBW you'll still have some time left on them after your demon dies to "make up" the DPS on the boss.

3. Put yourself in a good position to kite when Leo changes forms - getting stuck on say, the bonfire, while strafing works poorly.

The demons are stunnable. Not sure about pets and the KB; this was a problem in the past so I would send pet/Intimidate/recall pet while I kite & kill.

 

Wunlastri

I believe they rectified that. I killed a demon last friday and had no issues, though I may have gotten lucky with the KB.

As a hunter this far in the game, I assume you have the melee macro. Even if you don't have it, spam clip until the debuffs up and then strafe out of melee and (this is what I do) turn to fully run away getting a good distance then jump and spinning arcane, conc. With the pet on him, this should be ample time to obliterate the guy. I've seen some people use frost traps so you don't have to sweat attacking and can just run, but I drop snake traps (according to Gal a good call as they take extra nature damage. Did not know that). And yes, as BM you save cooldowns on demon phase for post whispers.

Saving cooldowns nets a double bonus as you don't pull threat off the lock, and if you don't get whispers you can just unload without worrying.

 

wycherley

Hello, I have found this thread very helpful but I wish to ask a question myself. According to Cheeky's spreadsheet I should be doing 1452 DPS with my current rotation in my gear. I am using A macro at the moment:
#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/cast [exists,target=pettarget] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

I seem to be struggling to hit 1250 DPS. Is the macro to blame or am I just getting unlucky with my crits?

 

Enova

Cheeky's spreadsheet is purely theoretical and assumes you're standing still and doing nothing at all other than firing your perfect shot rotation at constant lag and constant speed, and not run OOM.

So, any movement, use of a GCD for anything other than dps (mana pot, mend pet, bandage), any switching aspects, etc will be unaccounted for in the spreadsheet. And, since there really is no ideal fight without any of those occuring, your dps will be somewhat lower than what you can theoretically achieve. Not by much, but all these little things still account for a chunk of dps. All in all, the spreadsheet is used as a tool for calculating potential, rather than actual results.

Also, on longer but rather stationary fights (Lurker, Karatress, Naj'entus), your instant dps over the course of a single rotation may still be lower than the overall dps for the duration of the fight (depending on how your addons calculate dps: instant, damage done * 1/time in combat, damage done * 1/time casting, etc you get different values)

Guilty as charged ^

 

Galred

Also, what armor value are you using for the target in Cheeky's spreadsheet?

 

wycherley

I am using 7700 armor value.

I just updated the spreadsheet with my current gear and it says 1683 DPS and thanks for the explanation Enova

 

Needhamizer

From t5 gear I've gotten about 880 agility unbuffed... who knows what my armory shows right now but there is very little gear that I need from t5 and I am more than certain that my pve gear is optimum and my gemming is perfect. SV dps scales incredibly well with agility. You get 1.5 AP for each point of agility... kings + EW + Lightning reflexes. That is a very large change in itemization where gear is itemized at 2 AP - 1 agi (because of the crit side of agi). In short... get rid of all your gear that doesn't have agility and you'll see a big difference. Use cheeky's spreadsheet to find out which gem bonuses you want. It's likely that pure agi gems will always be more dps for you and your raid instead of the bonus. Even with access to Hyjal gems 10 crit = 8 agi delicate living ruby (raid buffed = 10 agility).

Leather is your friend, pvp gear is your friend. Ret paladins used well (JoW) > shadow priest because you don't have to be in their group. (Our ret paladin has amazing gear and more than holds his own with dps)

Suggested upgrades-
Get a different necklace... I think there's 2 in kara with agi, badge reward, necklace of the deep will match dps of a kara necklace if you're hit capped and is the highest agility necklace in the game. Not bad for a lvl 70 blue.

Attumen's leather gloves are excellent. So much agi on those.

Hydross' ring is excellent. If your guild is good at ZA if you can down 3 bosses in the timed event there's one of the best rings in the game for hunters.

Season three bracers > what you have now. I think in early Hyjal/BT there are bracers that are even better so watch out for those.

I would prefer a chestpiece with three gem slots like s2/s3 chest, t5 chest or ranger general's chest.

I use badge of tenacity on some fights because 187 agility for 20 seconds is huge and its a raid buff of 40 AP. I would definitely take bloodlust brooch over a haste trinket which would hurt a 1:1.5 rotation. Heck... bloodlust brooch is as good as Tsunami Talisman if you're hit capped.


I will comment more on spec after I do a little more research on MT vs. IAotH. I choose MT because IAotH isn't a big enough haste to justify a 1:1 rotation and won't help a 1:1.5 rotation much because you'll get a little clipping. Also, if I don't have a Spriest/ret pally I need the completely OP aspect of the viper. I don't use mana pots like candy but on fights we're learning and dps intensive moments i'll chug fel mana pots.

I tried 2 points in EW and even though I raid with 45-50% crit (I've broken 60% before... MT proc ) I was still disappointed in the uptime that I experienced which will always be different than spreadsheet uptime because of all the moving you do and switching target. You'll get EW up a lot faster if its guaranteed.

 

Needhamizer

Plugged into the spreadsheet and after seeing how IAotH is calculated decided that that talent is much better for dps. It'll also help you justify the extra mana pots to stay into that aspect seeing as you're talented into it. For a time I was in and out with using KC but I now use it quite regularly because I macro it with arcane shot which was made possible 2.3 which assures that it'll never interrupt a .5 second auto shot cast. SV dps is nothing to laugh at when executed correctly as the dozens of people that I beat out regularly will tell you.

(I just do /cast Kill Command; /cast arcane shot and it does them in one click. I also use the target=pettarget thingy)

 

Striker

At what point for a 41/20 Dorf BM Hunter does a Windserpent over take a Ravenger for top DPS? Is it based only on crit rate? Which exact pet abilites/ranks must be trained, or avoided?

 

Irimli

I wanted to ask a question concerning by crit chance vs. my attack power. I am currently at about 25% crit rate unbuffed, along with 1393 attack power. It seems as though my crit rate is a little to high when comparing it with my attack power. All of my gems have agility on them, no ap gems, some agilty and hit/stam gems for socket bonuses and meta gem.

I am not an expert and only know what i have read here on the forums, but should I switch out some of my agility gems in order to make up for the difference in my crit and ap? From what I have read BM hunters will gain more from a higher ap as opposed to a higher crit rate, am I wrong? I am just concerned that I am gimping my DPS by having to much crit and not enough AP. I also use cheeky's spread sheet and usually follow the gem suggestions unless meta/socket bonuses are needed.

Just a little more information, I am currently in a kara guild that is working on getting geared for the higher level content, so I by no means have the best gear, but I try to make up for it with smart decisions and learning from some of you people that post here. I use the usual ss/as/kc macro. I usually top the dps charts every raid unless we are struggling keeping me up because of aggro. I also run the WWS site for my guild so if anyone wants to take a look at it and tell me what they think I could improve on that would be great.
WWS

One more question, I am currently leveling my LW in hopes of grabbing the Ebon netherscale set. Is it worth it? I have plugged them into cheeky's and it will obviously be an upgrade to what I have now, but will it be replaced to soon? Or is it just simply not worth the grinding/gold needed to create it?

 

Coeg Bloodfeather

I wouldn't say that there is a specific point due to pet scaling which works as thus:

However, the reason that so many hunters use Ravagers are multifaceted. First off they +10% damage and +5% base armor. They do have a -7% health modifier though which can be fixed through pet talents. Lastly, the Ravager does have the ability of Gore rank 9 which "gores" the enemy, causing 37 to 61 damage. This attack has a 50% chance to inflict double damage, this combined with the KC (Give the command to kill, causing your pet to instantly attack for an additional 127 damage. Can only be used after the Hunter lands a critical strike on the target.) can lead to a very high amount of damage very often.

Now I know boar can learn gore as well, however the problem there is the boar has -10% dmg. However, it does have +9% armor and +4% health. Now granted, your Wind Serpent does +7% dmg as well, but has no health or armor modifiers and it's only special attack is its lightning, instantly dealing 99 to 113 Nature damage to a single target. As far as I know, this does not stack with KC at all.

Hope this helps you.

 

Velenorx

First off some words in advance. For the last half year or so I have been playing my Holy Paladin as a main, for my guilds sake. Yet after having been able to sneek in as a Hunter once or twice and finally having enough Paladins I switched my main back to Hunter, therefore my equip definitly sub-par for our level of Progross.

Now for my questeion: Here's the WWS of our last TK run. Wow Web Stats Yeah I know I suck at trash. Don't like it und don't give all my effort, I know I should. Voidreaver was just as everyone likes to see it (especially me ), Al'ar had different tasks. I was on Alar. My fellow Hunter-Mate was on Add-Duty.

Finally Solarian. Even after looking into it I do not know why I was beat in dmg this much. Why is it the case? Having looket into WWS als didn't give any major clues for me. I know the other Hunter is also a good one and he has the better Equipment, yet what'S the difference? FYI: I was bomb once during solarian. Usually single target DPSing Solarian. Supporting with Trap and Volly during adds.

 

Soulcow

A survival Hunter should not have more yellow and blue colored gems then required by your meta. The rest should be Delicate ruby/spinals.

Some regemming with the above in mind can give you 30-40 agility.

 

Koroshiya

Ilunis,

I went ahead and entered your information in Cheeky's spreadsheet with typical buffs and compared it again my build/gear.

Your Configuration
Hunter DPS - 1163.89
Total DPS - 1440.87
Ranged Critical Hit Chance - 41.05%
Ranged Hit Chance - 100.00%
Total Damage - 63,001.91
Agility - 1182 (783 Base)

My Configuration
Hunter DPS - 1163.65
Total DPS - 1447.41
Ranged Critical Hit Chance - 40.87%
Ranged Hit Chance - 100.00%
Total Damage - 62,372.02
Agility - 940 (592 base)

This is with my current gear and gems. Thus the reason I don't spend a ton of gold re-gemming all my gear to get +8 agi in everything.

Oh and for the record I would love to have some of the gear you have, but unfortunately it's not like I can ask for the drop gods to drop things in my favor.

However, for giggles I stacked all my current agility gear and put in all Agi gems, to see what a few hundred gold would get me.

My Configuration (With Agi Gems)
Hunter DPS - 1169.11
Total DPS - 1454.40
Ranged Critical Hit Chance - 40.55%
Ranged Hit Chance - 100.00%
Agility - 1016 (652)

There are some obvious piece I can pick up as you said in stuff like Kara. But the other stuff like chest piece is about as rare a drop as it gets.. my guild has seen only 1 drop for us. However, I don't see any point in re-gemming my current gear as the cost would certainly outweigh the +76 agility I would get. I could easily wear my Worgen Claw necklace and get at least that much since I have it.

Thanks for some numbers too look at!

Edit: So in summation, I guess what I am saying is.. Sure I am not buffing the physical dps as much as I may be able to.. but the mere fact I am buffing them should be enough for now. My damage is easily comparable to yours, they just aren't getting buffed as much as you buff your guys. So that tells me your guys should appreciate you a whole lot and shower you with accolades. ;-P As i get gear upgrades I will of course be selecting things with survival in mind now instead of BM like I have been in the past.

 

Cranch

The key is to (1) have a freeze trap [not frost trap] already down, and run away when it triggers, while at the same time (2) send pet in with intimidate (3) use arcane, conc shot, multi, auto, steady, repeat auto/steady until arcane is up (4) wing clip if it gets too close, move away and go back to (3).

Even if you're a clicker, as long as you put all the above buttons on the cast bar next to each other, you'll be good. Make sure you're at full hitpoints, too.

No BM hunter should ever get killed by his inner demon.

 

Needhamizer

Gunnery,

I'm actually pretty glad that I read your post because it made me review my own spec which unfortunately has been holding back some dps because I made a decision way back when to use more viper so I didn't have to chain mana pot. Lately we've been raiding with a ret pally more often which works wonders. Gratz on the upgrades... I think you got about 4 upgrades since last time!

Personally I've been thinking of shirking away from haste items such as your gun. It's a solid weapon especially since you're a dwarf but I think that SV hunters will get more out of haste (IAotH) the slower their weapons are. Even considering the agility that is on legion killer from BT according to spreadsheet s3 bow > everything till archimonde. I'm very close to getting it (I hit 1800 rating this morning).

Gratz on your helmet... its tough for a helmet to compensate for not having a meta but that one is very good. Your gear is reflective of that you recently switched over to SV and its fine... you have time to catch up. Keep the gronnstalker gloves over attumen leather gloves even though attumens would have more agi. There are 2 solid drops from hydross for you... thats even if you do SSC anymore. You changed up your gear a lot!!! aside from the upgrades I think you changed your neck/ring as well. You clearly know what you're doing. Something I do for calculating agility upgrades for personal dps downgrades I calculate (number of physical dps)*(extra agility)*(.25)*(.3) = raid dps from the extra agility assuming that most classes get about .3 dps per AP.

 

Koroshiya

Appreciate it the reply! Yeah I know where I want to head I am just not one to jump right away and blow all my cash to get there. As you can see though I know where I am going! Anyway, yeah I thought the same thing but between it and the Sunfury I went for the hasted weapon. Not to mention my name is "Gunnery."

I am looking to pick up Arcanite Steam-Pistol as soon as I can, not sure I want to use the DKP on anything beyond that for a weapon honestly. After raiding for a bit as a Survival hunter I have really enjoyed it but to be completely honest, for my guild there's seems to be very little point for anything other then a BM hunter. That's not to say Survival hunters don't have their place.. it's just that we typically raid with 2-3 physical dps aside from myself... And unfortunately, they aren't really taking advantage of it as much as we had hoped. They are the weak point in our guild to be quite honest. Our #1 DPS is a rogue and aside from him the rest of our physical DPS is lackluster.

So I will probably be going back to BM. However, I am going to give it a little more time before I make that decision final!

 

Qrt

I'm too lazy to run away from the demon - but I have yet to be killed by it even in melee. I use the fact that it's vulnerable to nature and put down a snake trap. Even when whacking at it with my Legacy (and having pet on it too of course using STR food buff) I generally have plenty of time to finish it off.

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Igor, help me with the bags.
Igor: Soitenly. You take the blonde, I'll take the one in the turban.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: I was talking about the luggage.

 

compbry15

Hey all,

I have been reading the ElitistJerks website for a while now, and have been fooling around with Cheeky's spreadsheet as well (great tool, btw!). However, one thing that I have been wondering, and not really seen discussed, is whether the epic LW 375 hunter gear is worth it. Of course I am sure that after trying many multiple different sets in the spreadsheet I could figure this out exactly, but unfortunately, having just started getting close to 70 with my new hunter, I really don't know much about the epic level drops that are out there and it would require a lot of extra research that some of you may already know just from experience.

So my question is: Generally, is it worth it to spend the time and money farming for the epic LW hunter set if you are on the brink of starting Karazhan? Is it safe to assume that if I did invest in these, they would not have a chance of being replaced for a while? If so, should I go for the socket bonuses or straight up +8 agility in all of the slots.

I am currently level 65, I do have another 70 which is what led me down the path to enlightenment here at EJ. I am in a re-roll guild and plan on starting Karazhan within a week or 2 of hitting 70, and we will most likely plow through that and ZA. I really haven't been able to start collecting my pre-raid gear yet, since most of it seems to drop from the 70 instances (SH, Bot, SLabs, etc), so I have a lot of room to work in terms of setting up my character items.

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.


Another question I have is what is best to train my pet? I have a ravager, and obviously gave him Gore 9, Bite 8, and Dash 3 so far. For leveling I have put the rest of the points into armor and health so he could tank better, but at 70 I am planning on respecing his training points if needed. I know I should get avoidance, but aside from that should I get resists? max stamina? Should I be changing his points depending on the encounter I will be doing?


My final question (for now) is related to shot rotation and lag. Since getting steady shot I have been putting a lot of time into practicing my shot rotations. I am using quartz to see my current casting lag and have noticed at times that the projected lag (the red part of the casting bar) does not match up to my measured latency from other addons. My perfmon addon might say i have a latency of 120, but quartz is predicting like 250+ of casting latency. Is this affected by computer lag as well, or is something else skewing this? Also related, I am having a hard time ever being able to get a perfect rotation when using rapid fire and SS at the same time. Normally when I am ready to unload, I pop Bestial Wrath, Trinket, and Rapid Fire. At that point, manually threading my shots becomes so lagged (according to quartz) that i inevitably clip or clobber at least 1 rotation during the speed increase. Is this normal, or is there something I can do to perfect my threading during such massive speed increases? Should I use a macro for steady shot during rapid fire and just manually thread other times?

Sorry for all the questions, but hopefully some of them can be answered.

Thanks all for your insight, and I look forward to reading!

Veretar

 

Enova

First off, let's see about the leatherworking set. Theyre your typical pre-raid epics, but typically, they'll last you even in tier 5 content, depending on your luck. It certainly helps to get better than the average level 70 blues before raiding, so, if you've got the mats or you can farm them while doing something else as well (i.e grinding rep, leveling, getting attuned, etc), by all means, go for them. You could replace them at your first Kara run with slightly better gear, or you could stick with them for half a year, depending on your luck. As an alternative, if you're into battlegrounds, you can get the vindicator gear for honor points. Armor - Items - World of Warcraft
Now, it may have a lot of useless resilience, or semi useless stamina, but the much higher ilevel still makes them good dps items nonetheless. I wouldn't recommend wasting honor on the season 1 gladiator gear, though...

Now, socketing. Basically, if you get a helm with a meta socket, your must have gem is [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond]. So, as soon as you have the 2 yellow and 2 blue gems requirements, stacking +8 agi is the way to go. Now, you can fullfill some items' socket bonuses as well while socketing for the meta gem, but the way you do that is up to you (yellow+blue, orange + purple, green all the way, etc).

Training your pet for raiding, you'll want to max out the dps skills first (gore and bite, that you already have, and cobra reflexes). Dash is also useful, so you can keep that, I think. For survivability skills, avoidance - rank 2 is a must have. Armor is quite useless, because your pet will get killed very fast if it's ever targeted for melee, anyway. Most of the damage a pet takes is AOE, and resistances + avoidance mitigate that. For Kara, I'd suggest getting 120 or 140 resistance in both Shadow and Arcane, and then putting all the points you have left into stamina.

I see you're using a slow, 3.00 speed weapon, which is far from ideal for BM, and I'm guessing your rotation also includes Arcane and Multi Shots. Typically, you want a fast, 2.60 or 2.70 weapon (the most common one that you can get is [Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle], but if you can get into a PUG or guild Doomwalker kill, [Barrel-Blade Longrifle] is also awesome). Now, with that kind of weapon, you would use a simple steady - auto shot rotation, and keep up Kill Command every time it's up (most likely by a macro, but it can be hand timed, as well), and, since steady shot will always have a slightly shorter cast time than auto shot, regardless of haste effects, you should be safe from clipping. Also, you can get the slower, 2.80 or 2.90 weapons, no problems there, but to maximize their effects, you need to get some passive haste gear, to trim down their speed to something close to an unhasted Wolfslayer.

One last thing, though, don't apologize for asking, that's what we're here for. Don't sign your posts, that's why you filled in your profile

Guilty as charged ^

 

Tilethryn

I don't know if you guys are using Cheeky's spreadsheet or just eyeballing Ebon Netherscale (the 375 LW set) and t4. However, for me, Ebon Netherscale trounced anything until SSC/TK. I didn't take off my Ebon Netherscale til I had a s2 chest, TK Bracers, and the waist from Illhoof to make up for the loss of setbonus hit.

 

compbry15

Thanks for the responses!

Wierd for some reason I always thought 3.0 spd for BM was ideal...guess I had read wrong. There are like 100's of pages dating back to patch 2.1 in the 3 theorycrafting threads for hunters lol.

I guess that explains why i was comparing some pre-kara bows/guns in cheeky's and the valano's bow was so far above the 3.0 guns I was looking at.

Anyone have any info on what to train pets? And also do people bother feeding their pets the sporregar snacks for the stamina increase?

Thanks again