Fairly low progressed Hunter by this forum's standards, but have a random questions. Every time I FD my autoshot seems to skip one cycle before firing again, is this just a display issue? Secondly, I have considered enchanting two 1-handed weapons with 2x int enchants and swapping to the S3 axe, is is a fairly common practice or is it not worth bothering with?

I'm mostly in kara level gear and the occasional S1/3 piece. I average about 800 dps though kara ( WWS ) which is way under the projected 1200+ listed on the spreadsheet. Do most hunters find the spreadsheet mirrors their actual performance?

(currently trying out surv spec, normally 41/20 with wolfslayer)

I doubt it. The spreadsheet assumes a situation where you stand still and fire a flawless shot rotation uninterrupted for an infinite time on a static target. In Kara, and all other raids there will be too many factors interrupting such a perfect scenario. Trapping on Moroes, running around on Aran, etc etc are all actiuons that will lower your dps.

800 dps sounds like a good enough number, for a full run average, for a hunter with your gear. It's roughly that level I tend to get, depending on group setup, with roughly equal gear.

Since many people ask gearing- and especially +hit-questions in the latter posts: Check Cheeky´s spreadsheet. All questions like "would tuskbreaker be worth it?", "should I drop crit for hit?", etc... are perfectly answered by Cheeky´s awesome tool. You just have to invest a bit of time, to "install" it, get in touch with its handling but the gain for this time-investment is the most powerful tool for gear-questions that is availabe at the moment.

Another side-note: Don´t be too possessive of +hit. Its definitely good to be capped, but if you have to sacrifice many other stats it might not be worth it at the moment (although at T5-gear-lvl it shouldn´t be any problem at all to cap hit). Just rationally compare the items, but again, using the spreadsheet will yield perfectly comparable results.

One more thing: Try to push your raid to get more buffs. In a 10-man you might miss buffs due to a specific group-setup but there is no excuse e.g. for a lack of FF in a 25-man-raid. You´ll only get impFF with a moonkin, but as soon as you have a druid in your raid the boss should always get debuffed with FF. Same goes for CoR if you have more than 2 Warlocks.

Just try to convince your raid, that these things do matter (if they don´t get it until now). Make a post in your forum, explaining the worth of FairieFire (and if you have a moonkin, then try to convince him that impFF is a huge benefit for all physical-dds - the moonkin just has to drop a bit of aggro-reduce) or CoR for physical-DDs. If you explain your point reasonably nobody in your raid will be cross with you for suggesting an improvement.

Sorry for not answering directly, but the last 4 or 5 questions were all of a quite general manner, thus I tried to answer quite generally.

Don´t forget that the spreadsheet models a perfect situation of standing still, perfect execution and full tank&spank for the whole lenght of a fight. As Gjorn says you won´t match the result in most fights since there are few fights which don´t require anything else apart from dps-ing. If you like to test your capability of going all out you have to do so at one of the few tank&spank-fights out there. Examples would be Attumen in Kara or Nalorakk in ZA (though you won´t be fully buffed due to it being a 10-man-zone) as well as High-Astromancer Solarian in TK or Teron Gorefiend in BT (if you don´t geht ghosted). At these fights you should be able to nearly match the suggested results.

Or surpass those results, given that the spreadsheet does not account for drums, bloodlusts, syncing trinkets, multiple FI's

I've spent ton's of time reading posts and experimenting with various shot rotations and there is plenty to read. However I haven't seen much written about what I call my "Activity Rotation." Basically my concept of an "Activity Rotation" is the sequence of activities I do in a typical Boss fight. The "Activity Rotation" assumes you know and understand your proper spec-based shot rotation. I am currently BM spec and my current "Activity Rotation" looks like this:

-1) Cast Hunter's Mark on Boss (I am the raid member with 5/5 Improved Hunter's Mark)
0) Cast MD on MT
1) Hit Bloodlust Broach, Bestial Wrath and Rapid Fire
2) Start 1:1 shot rotation spam (macro which includes kill command) and send pet in
3) As soon as I get to 90% of MT's aggro FD
4) As soon as I have used ~2500 mana use a super mana pot
5) As soon as MD is up again use it (I use an MD macro that automatically cast Misdirect onto my Focus target, which I will set as the MT or in certain situations the OT)
6) As soon as FD is up again use it
7) As soon as Bloodlust Broach is up again use it
8) As soon as BW is up again use it
9) Keep Hunter's Mark Refreshed
10) Throw in a mend pet as needed
11) As soon as Rapid Fire is up, use it
12) If remaining mana is < 20 % and Boss health is > 10% then Switch to Aspect of the Viper (unless a shadow priest is in my party)
13) Return to step 5 and repeat until the boss is down

I am posting this here to see what others are using for their Activity Rotation and to see if there are suggestions for ways in which I can improve mine.

This is quite an interesting concept. Some slight adjustions I´d make:

1) I don´t have any solid mathematics behind this (I don´t know if anybody made some already) but I tend to belief that syncing Rapid Fire with BW and BB yields better results than hitting Rapid Fire apart from other CDs. Though, I might as well be wrong, so if anybody could provide a model concerning this question I´d be glad.

2) I would skip KC in the rotation before switching to AotV. However, I can´t really see a reason to go oom in a tank&spank-fight as BM if you pot properly and have 25-man-buffs. I normally keep AotH throughout a whole fight, although I use the more mana-intensive 1:1 w/multi-priority - rotation. Without SP in my group, of course. By the way, having a paladin judge Wisdom is the best boost to your mana-budget.

3) Skipping further MDs on non-aggro-sensitive-fights also helps your mana-household.

Only slight differences.

If I have a spriest, I'll throw some mana at a boss and then pot at the 2500-3000 threshold. But then fall back to 1:1. (If we have more than two hunters, we'll usually get a spriest since we don't have T5 2-piece sets yet for the pet healing. That's kinda the tipping point for us over other casters. The spriest don't mind the FI x3 or FI x4 either.

I'll usually do a Distracting Shot as one of initial MDs. This had been the equiv of a few sunders in the pre-BC days.

I'll do Rapid Fire early of course, but not as part of the MD.

Okay, Recount was too much of a memory hog, so I couldn't use it. But a Rogue got WWS working for our Mag raid. I was a cube clicker and did over 1k DPS. I'm guessing on a normal fight when I can go balls to the wall it will be higher. I think maybe I'm reading SWStats information wrong. Here is mine for that fight. Asmodeana - WWS For some reason I don't see TBW or Rapid Fire break downs like I've seen in other WWS charts. Guess it's a configuration issue.

When I use Cheeky's spreadsheet, I load my armory then I make sure my pet information is correct, set the level to 73. I am now putting in my standard raid buffs (something I should of done before since so much scales with Kings, etc). Then I select gear one pc at a time to see how much my Hunter DPS improves and how much my crit improves. I do the same thing with the gems. I never look at other ppls gear except to see what kind of gems they are using.

Tell your raid leader he is a fucking idiot for even contemplating putting a hunter let alone a BM hunter on sporebat duty use a warlock (affliction is good can stack dots and they die).

Vashj is a ultra low armor boss and hunters flat out destroy her. You're asking for DPS failure as a new vashj guild if you're not maximizing your physical dps.

Does anyone know if certain mobs have a higher-than-average Frost Resistance? I'm not talking about immune mobs like water elementals ... but the nagas in Heroic SV always seemed to break early without the full 2/2 Trap Mastery. The were also Ethereum caster mobs in heroic MT (I think -- it was definitely Auch somewhere) that always seemed to break early.

I've been aware of the 1/2 vs 2/2 argument for a while. Still, I currently have 2/2 Trap Mastery because I was worried about Frost Resist mobs in heroics. But I'll drop it next time I respec if it's definitely, absolutely, utterly useless.

The second point in Trap Mastery is useless and should be dropped when you respec. The talent does not provide spell penetration, which is the only thing that would help against mobs that had high frost resistance. What Trap Mastery gives you is 5 spell hit per point, which is all you need to be able to trap mobs up to level 72. The second point would only affect targets that are either bosses or level 73 (adds in a boss encounter) which can't be trapped anyway.

My Advice to pick up Dorys embrace to the earlier poster went along with the advice to get some PVP gear to fill in weaker gear spots. By doing so you will get more armor pen, which will make Dorys shine more.

For example S2 and S3 breastplates are far superior to the Ebon Netherscale BP.

In my opinion, every single hunter should be on an arena team, it doesn't matter if you lose every game, get your points per week.

This is good advice if you have to to spare to pvp. I don't. I raid 7 days a week. We have a tough schedule. :-/

I suggest using a Fel Mana Potion instead - it is a flat amount of mana returned, and the debuff doesn't affect us. Granted, they are more 'expensive' to make, but that's what guild banks, guildies, and alts with gathering skills are for.

PS - don't sign your posts; they don't like that 'round these parts.

With decent ques, you can knock out 10 arena games in an hour. You should be able to squeeze in an hour per week. Your guild is missing out on a lot of good gear if you raid so much that you can't fit in an hour a week for Arenas.

Ok here is a question of my own....

Anybody else having problems with your pet respeccing cost just going up and up and up? It used to be you could sawp stable pets and the price would reset back down. Mine isn't doing that anymore. Getting expensive. For example, I respec my pet for the VR fight for Arcane resist.

Am I missing a trick or something?

Well if you're raiding that much I would expect your T6 gear, which you should have with that much time put in, to out do any arena gear anyways. Seriously, what guild that isnt racing world firsts raids 7 days a week?

Some alternatives to continuously respeccing your pet for fights:
1) Have multiple pets with different sets of abiltiies keyed to different fights. That way when you need to switch, it is a matter of just switching pets instead of having to respec them all the time. Saves both money and time. I realize that 3 pets can't ideally handle all situations, but you can build the three up to provide sufficient utility for all situations.
2) Don't respec your pet as much. My pets each have at least 30 resistance in all fields since it only costs 5 TP. I do VR all the time with my Fire/Shadow resist pet with only 30 Arcane resistance, and I rarely if ever have a problem with my pet dieing. Your pet really should not be taking much damage in the VR fight if everyone is performing correctly.

Definitely agree that having the right set of buffs is very benefitial to a raid. I also agree that if a druid is in the raid, that FF should generally be up at all times for the target debuff.

However, I disagree with trying to persuade a Moonkin into having IFF for the following reasons:
- Taking points in IFF, which does not help the moonkin if he is hit capped itself, costs the moonkin in other talents that can improve their DPS or raid utility.
- It should be the responsibility of each character to make sure that they meet their hit cap. You shouldn't depend on IFF to make your hit caps. What if the moonkin is not available for that night's raid? Well, you are in trouble hit-wise unless everyone has alternate gear to make their hit cap. What if the moonkin is available for the raid and forgets to or is unable to cast or refresh IFF, since he is dead, silenced, etc? Unless everyone in the guild is hit capped without IFF, then the guild DPS is going to suffer during these periods.

I agree that having a moonkin with IFF up all the time can be a benefit to the raid since raiders can drop hit gear for DPS gear for the 3% hit of IFF. However, unless you have a very reliable moonkin that is at every raid, never dies, and keeps IFF up 100% of the time, I think that this request has the potential to backfire.

My suggestion is that each player should make sure they meet their hit caps on their own and not rely on IFF.

Ours -- we take a zerging approach to raiding (lots of people, take whatever's on really) plus we've only started since the week after january.

It's quite relaxing to know that noone is crying if I don't raid for a week, but there's also most likely something to do tonight if I want to play

Except the tank.

It's been more then a week and it still cost me 2g to respec my pet last night. I have 3 pets, one my arena pet, 2nd is my turtle for off tank in heroics, and 3rd is my DPS all around cat. I was respeccing my cat every week for VR, the price was resetting but it isn't now.

How does "everybody donig their job correctly" stop your pet from taking damage during poundings?